


Guide Us Home

by Frea_O



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-17
Updated: 2012-07-10
Packaged: 2017-11-05 13:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there had been an heir at Downton Abbey all along, their lives would be very different...But for everything that might change, some truths remain irrefutable. AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which There Is a Death in the Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : As of June 2014, I have decided not to finish this story for my own mental health reasons, and the fact that I no longer enjoy _Downton Abbey_ or Matthew Crawley. So this story IS incomplete and will never be completed. There is a tiny epilogue on the very last chapter, but you have been warned. Read at your own risk.

_April, 1912_  
 _Manchester, England_

“What will you do with the house, do you think?”

Mary looked up from the letter she had been penning—it was tedious to respond to such false overtures of sympathy, but one simply didn’t neglect a baroness—and across the study at the set of eyes that matched her own, if not in color but in shape. “I suppose,” she said, “that I’ll sell it. I see no reason to continue living in Manchester.”

“Better not let Sybil hear you say that. She’ll be heartbroken to hear you’re not offering it up to one of her charities.”

“She’ll simply have to find her own wealthy heir to marry and subsequently outlive shortly afterward, then, won’t she?” 

Simon Crawley winced. “Mary…”

She knew she’d stepped over a line, so Mary kept her gaze focused on the letter. Very few could convince her to temper the forked tongue some days she was positive sat between her lips, she knew. Right now, however, she didn’t want to be the polite drawing room miss. Nor would she feel shame, not about this, and most certainly, not from Simon.

Even so, Sybil was family.

“You know I don’t mean it,” she said. “Sybil will hardly be heartbroken. For all of her progressive notions and fanciful ideas, she’s a Crawley. Above all things, we’re pragmatic.”

“Too right,” Simon said, and sighed. He fiddled with the cuff of his jacket, never at ease when forced to remain still and indoors. Mary reckoned that too much longer of a stay in Manchester might drive her brother, generally the most genial of the lot of them, to drink. He preferred fields to ballrooms and farmlands to dinner parties, and Downton above all else. With the Earl needed at home to handle matters on the estate, though, the task of assisting Mary in Manchester fell to him. For the most part, he had been helpful, though Mary knew he’d rather be out on his horse, barreling through a field or a forest somewhere.

Mary almost wished he _would_ return to Downton and leave her to her thoughts.

“Seems a pity to sell the house, though,” Simon said.

Mary pushed her letter away. She could complete it once her brother gave in to the restlessness and went for his daily ramble. “I’ve no connection to it. We kept it so that Edmund could remain close to his factories. Since I intend to sell those as well, there remains no need to keep the house.”

“Oh, I know. I just fancy the electricity here. Papa’s considering installing it at Downton.”

“That ought to give Granny something in which to latch her teeth.”

Simon’s grin was quicksilver, rather like a roguish version of their mother’s. He’d inherited her father’s optimism, and their mother’s dignity besides. As she did, he favored their mother to the point where it was impossible to look at Simon Crawley and Mary Cavendish, née Crawley, and see anything but the obvious sibling resemblance. Perhaps because of this, Mary had always felt like the darker half to their coin, her wit more cutting, her dignity less natural and more of a protective cloak to be drawn around her and made to hide a deep unhappiness she could never shake.

“Yes,” Simon said, “I suspect that Granny will enjoy another topic over which to complain, though she likely doesn’t care what it is, just that it is there. Where will you settle, if not here? London?”

“Perhaps.” She’d given it a great deal of thought, but London held little charm for her at the moment. “In time.”

“It might be prudent to travel while you’re confined to the black. You’re quite wealthy, you know, able to knock about in style.”

Since her late husband had settled almost an obscene amount of his fortune on her, as well as his munitions factories and the house in Manchester, Mary knew “quite wealthy” was more than a minor understatement. She had in essence become her Aunt Rosamund, without the twenty years of marriage to precede becoming a widow. Because she had yet to fully sort out her feelings about that, she considered Simon’s idea. It had crossed her mind that two years of limited social engagement, though she’d respected and had been fond of her late husband, now stretched out in front of her like an impossibility she might never overcome. Knocking about in style as she saw the world might ease the burden.

“Of course, I would see it as an honor to assist you in traveling or settling. Brother’s honor,” Simon said, prattling on as he usually did whenever Mary considered something. “Whichever you wish. Even if it is as far away as Timbuktu.”

That coaxed a laugh from her. “You needn’t fear that,” she said. “I have no desire to see Timbuktu. I’ve accepted Papa’s offer to wait out my mourning period at Downton.”

“You have? When?”

“I sent the letter with the morning post. While you were still abed.”

Simon grinned, unrepentant. Mary knew he considered any day in which he had to rise before noon as a wasted day. “Excellent! When do we set off?”

“I have matters to handle.” Mary glanced at the mantle clock and set her pen aside. “It’s for the best to return to Downton, I think. I’ll only be a nuisance to Edmund’s family if I take up Mrs. Cavendish’s offer to stay at Coventry House. Peter Cavendish has already told me there will always be a place for me there, you know.”

“Kind of him.” Simon gave her a lazy smile. “I see you’ve hoodwinked all of the Cavendishes.”

She wrinkled her nose at him again like they were back in the schoolroom, and Simon laughed, waving away the matter. “And of course, you’ll always have a place at Downton while Papa and I are there. And my future issue, naturally, will fear their Aunt Mary too much to ever cast you off.”

Though she often wished her brother would be more serious, his particular brand of humor had been something of a godsend among the constant stream of Friday-faced mourners through the drawing room, all wanting to pay their respect to Edmund Cavendish. “Am I such a monster?”

“Hardly,” Simon said, and the door to the study opened, admitting the butler.

Hatch stepped through. “Mr. Babbett and Mr. Crawley, my lady,” he said, giving a short bow.

“What could Patrick be doing here?” Simon asked, rising to his feet. “He’s supposed to be on his way to Southampton.”

The young man that followed Babbett, Edmund’s lawyer, was not Patrick Crawley, however. He was somebody Mary had never seen before. Babbett, she knew because he had visited several times to discuss Edmund’s estate and how it pertained to her. But she had not met the man in the well-cut if otherwise unremarkable suit that trailed behind him. He turned impossibly blue eyes on Mary and for a split-second, she forgot what it meant to breathe.

“Lady Mary.” Mr Babbett made his bow, and the moment passed, though her heart seemed to moving a little too quickly for comfort. “Lord Downton. Thank you very much for agreeing to meet with me. May I present my associate, Mr. Matthew Crawley? He’s the brilliant legal mind we’ve snatched straight from the jaws of the competition, as his knowledge of industrial law is unparalleled. Crawley, this is Lady Mary Cavendish and Simon Crawley, Lord Downton.”

Mary murmured the proper greeting, but it was Simon that grinned broadly as he shook the young solicitor’s hand. “You wouldn’t happen to be related to the Earl of Grantham, would you? Could we be cousins?”

“You’ll have to forgive Simon,” Mary told the lawyers. “His many other stellar qualities make up for the enthusiasm, I assure you.”

Matthew Crawley, however, seemed to take it in stride. He did glance at Babbett, as if for guidance, but his reply was remarkably composed. “I do believe there is some connection to the nobility, quite some time back, but I’m not certain,” he said. “My mother would know more.”

Mary bit back a quip that every lawyer should bring a copy of the family heraldry to any meeting with a client and instead offered them tea. The little moment upon their entrance had flustered her, which was both a bit awe-inspiring and puzzling in itself. She hadn’t even had that strong of a reaction to Edmund when she had first seen him across Lady Branksome’s drawing room, and she’d married him. She was a widow of two weeks. She had no right to a reaction of that sort at all.

She glanced at Matthew Crawley as Babbett and Simon exchanged pleasantries. Matthew Crawley looked away very quickly.

She was spared by the arrival of the tea, which they took sitting around Edmund’s monolith of a desk, large enough to fit at least three men to a side. Her husband had spent hours there, overseeing the demands from the factories he kept in Manchester, often working past sundown and even occasionally until the sun graced the sky anew. Though he could have settled into the life of untitled gentry, Edmund Cavendish hadn’t sat well as a country gentleman. He’d had too much drive for that, instead leaving the estate to his younger brother Peter and managing what had been his uncle’s factories instead.

Mary had envied him the ability to avoid a life of idleness.

She sat in his chair, though it felt foreign, and listened to Babbett. It had been obvious to Mary that Babbett had disagreed with Edmund’s choices to leave the factories to his wife, and it had been obvious to Babbett that Mary was not the type to go quietly into the night and take the lawyer at his word. Because of that, though, she almost believed that Babbett had begun to respect her. He certainly tried to talk around her less, especially since he hadn’t found a sympathetic ear in Simon. The first time he’d attempted to cajole Simon to his side of the argument against Mary, Simon had played the “What do I know? I’m just the son of a country lord and a bit of a dunce” card so well that Babbett had likely lost all respect on the spot. Simon just as likely preferred it that way.

“I’ve brought Crawley with me today so that we can discuss the properties on Johnson Street and West Highclere,” Babbett said. “His knowledge, like I said, of industrial law should help us avoid any wrinkles that might arise.”

“Oh, is there a problem?” Mary asked, setting her teacup on its saucer.

“No, no problem,” Matthew Crawley assured her. “Mr. Babbett says you intend to sell the properties, and I am here to offer my assistance in making the process as painless as possible.”

Mary lifted an eyebrow at him. “Then I suppose I owe you my gratitude for that. I have not had time to review all of the paperwork you left me after our last meeting, Mr. Babbett, though I have given it my best shot. I am afraid the language is very dense.”

“If you require any help, I would of course be happy to assist,” Matthew said.

“Excellent,” Simon said. “I’ve attempted to help my sister, but it all looks like Greek to me.”

Mary gave him a look. “You speak Greek. Quite well, I might add.”

“Doesn’t mean I enjoy it.”

Matthew raised his teacup to his lips so quickly that Mary suspected he was hiding a smile. Mr. Babbett’s look remained neutral. “My offer still stands,” Matthew said. “Though I do apologize, for I’ve brought more paperwork for you to read. Mr. Babbett tasked me to put together a list for you of the men who have put forth offers on the properties in question and a little information about each of them. I hope you’ll find that this reading won’t be quite as dense.”

He held a portfolio out to her. Mary accepted it with a nod of thanks as Matthew turned to Simon. “Or as Greek,” he said.

“Pity,” Mary said. “I’m fond of Greek.”

“You speak Greek as well, my lady?”

“’Course she does,” Simon said. “Who else would I have practiced it with? She’s better at it than I am. If I were inclined to be competitive, I would find it a bit embarrassing.”

“Don’t let him fool you for a moment,” Mary said, though she wasn’t fully paying attention as she unwrapped the documents Matthew had handed her. “He’s very competitive, until the point at which he’s beaten, which is when he pretends he was never competitive in the first place. And this is a full list of the offers, yes?” She looked at Matthew now.

Why he shifted in his seat, she had no idea, though Babbett did cast a look at his young associate that Mary couldn’t quite interpret. “The serious offers,” Matthew said, an actual blush rising on his cheeks. “The properties are substantial, and worth far more than we initially thought. Each prospective buyer will need to be vetted. If you are truly intent on selling.”

Mary looked up in surprise. “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

Both of the lawyers looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Lady Mary,” Babbett said, “before his death, when we spoke of his will, Mr. Cavendish expressed his wish that these factories would be kept within his family.”

He’d certainly made no mention of this to her, Mary thought. Though, it had to be considered that when a man was only twenty-nine and quite healthy all around, the topic of death didn’t much enter the conversation. She remained surprised every day that he had even taken the precautions to protect her after his death that he had, given that their marriage was such a new thing.

“Why not leave the properties to Peter, then? Edmund and I had no children.” Society would expect her to remarry, after all, once a suitable mourning period had passed, and if she kept ownership of the factories, they would pass out of his family. It made little sense.

“Mr. Cavendish had his reasons in believing you were the better candidate, Lady Mary,” Babbett said. “And he considered you family, children or no children. He was quite clear about that.”

He would have been, Mary thought. Edmund Cavendish had never had a problem speaking his mind—quite clearly, often loudly. Babbett must not have liked that very much.

“So Edmund’s dying wish was that I continue to run the factories in his stead?” she asked, tapping her fingers on the first of the sheets of paper Matthew had handed her. His handwriting was neat without seeming fussy. “But I’ve no experience with that sort of thing and I’m a…”

Woman, she had been about to say. Since that fact was blindingly obvious, and she had never had much desire to be obvious, she trailed off.

“The manager Mr. Cavendish hired is a good man,” Matthew said, as Babbett looked a bit like he had tasted something sour. “I’ve been down to speak with him, as several of the buyers on that list I provided you have visited him. I fully believe he could steer you aright, should you wish to keep the factories. And of course, you would have myself and the other associates at Mr. Babbett’s firm to provide you with any counsel you may wish to seek.”

“Why hasn’t this been mentioned before?” Simon asked, idly flicking at the heel of his boot where it was crossed at his knee. “The Lady Mary and I had been quite under the impression that there was nothing to be done but to sell the factories to the highest bidder.”

“Lady Cavendish told me early on that it was her sole intention to sell,” Babbett said.

If Matthew Crawley hadn’t brought it up, Mary thought, she would never have known the wishes of her late husband. She cast him a shrewd glance, but he was busy looking into his teacup and not at his boss.

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Babbett,” she said. “I see you did. I will speak with my brother and give the matter some thought about what I wish to do with the factories, of course, and review these papers your associate has given me. Was there anything else you required?”

There was, of course, as Mary had discovered dying was a frightful business, fraught with more paperwork than even her father’s estate generated. She listened to Babbett, nodding at the appropriate intervals as they dealt with the specifics of the rest of the estate Edmund had left for her. Occasionally, her eyes and thoughts strayed to the now-silent Matthew Crawley. Why had he even brought up Edmund’s wishes, when it was obvious she couldn’t fulfill them? She had never considered the idea of keeping the factories. It simply wasn’t done.

But it was 1912, wasn’t it? Hadn’t things begun to change, for the better?

Once Babbett had finished, she rose to see him and his young associate to the front door, her mind still whirling. Simon followed them out, getting a promise from Matthew Crawley that if they were related, the lawyer would let them know, as finding new family was always a joy. Matthew looked a bit nonplussed at this as he left, donning his cap.

The instant they were gone, Simon turned to Mary. “Well,” he said. “Well, well, well. Looks like I was right. There was something old Babbling wasn’t telling you.”

“Babbett,” Mary said, though the nickname made her smile.

Simon lounged back against the chaise. “Wonder what else he isn’t telling you.”

“Probably quite a lot.” Mary lifted the folio, raising her eyebrows slightly at how hefty it felt. Matthew Crawley had done his research. “Edmund wanted me to run the factories. It boggles my mind. I never understood what was going through that man’s mind while he was alive, and I find him even more of a puzzle now.”

Simon sobered. “I suspect,” he said, “he’s looking out for more than your financial security, sister mine.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s as plain as the nose on your face, isn’t it? You’ll grow bored within a month of wearing widow’s weeds and as good at it as you are, you never much liked paying calls. Before long, that tongue of yours would get you into trouble. Ed did the best thing he could possibly do for you: he left you with a challenge to occupy your mind and your time.”

“Oh, Simon, do be serious. It would make more sense to leave these factories to somebody like Sybil. I haven’t had a single bit of experience in this area.”

“I am serious,” Simon said. “Quite so. You were raised by a Countess. If that isn’t a suitable pedigree to manage a group of wild, unruly people, I’ll eat my hat.”

Mary doubted that preparing a menu had much in common with things she had heard Edmund say, like profit margins and acceptable loss. Having been raised on Mrs. Patmore’s cooking, she knew the loss of a single burnt griddle cake was not considered acceptable.

“Still, this makes me fear my late husband was mad,” she said, looking down at the portfolio Matthew Crawley had given her. “A woman, running factories?”

“Think of it as an adventure. I’m quite envious, you know. It would be quite nice to have a purpose on this planet.”

Mary looked up, but Simon didn’t have the pensive look on his face that she feared. Instead, he was idly admiring the end of his cuff. “I don’t suppose you’d like to give it a try?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest as she raised her eyebrows at him.

“Goodness, no. I think I’ll go for my walk. This is too fine a day to be stuck inside with paperwork like I see you intend to do.”

Mary looked toward the windows, outside of which April was at its grimmest. “As ever, your definition of ‘too fine a day’ differs from the rest of society,” she said, but she waved him off to enjoy his rambles about Manchester while she looked over the packet Matthew Crawley had given her. Her eyes fell on the half completed letter to Baroness Sutcliffe, which had represented the upcoming tedium of her existence. Now, it seemed far less daunting. She had, she realized, quite a lot more to think about than she had known.


	2. In Which There Is a Business Meeting

_April, 1912_   
_Manchester, England_

Early April chill nipped into the air as Matthew collected his bicycle from the alley alongside the firm’s office, but he didn’t mind. England’s fickle weather had never troubled him, even during his school days when the professors couldn’t be bothered to keep the fires lit in the grate. It came from having, if not an optimistic outlook, at least a realistic one. He accepted the reality that he was going to be cold, and he moved past it, to other things he had on his mind.

Today, he had more than a little on his mind.

Josiah Babbett was annoyed. No, that wasn’t quite right: Babbett was displeased, but the displeasure wasn’t something Matthew could control. He was new to Stockwell, Babbett, and Haims, and making a good impression was vital, but it couldn’t be helped. It had been his job to speak up on behalf of the client, and according to all of his missives, Cavendish had clearly wanted his wife to take over the factories.

For himself, Matthew had had no idea why. The reports Matthew had read about her told him she was clearly a nobly-born woman, bred for tea parties and not much else, composed and reserved and enshrouded in cool manners. In addition, he knew what the others at the firm had been saying about the Lady Mary Cavendish. “She’s young. She’ll recover.” They’d wondered what Cavendish, always outgoing and outspoken, had seen in such a proper wife. There were claims that she was pretty, but they had seen prettier, high-born, but Cavendish could have had better.

It hadn’t stopped him from standing in the doorway in shock when he’d first seen her. It had felt as though somebody had struck him across the midsection with a plank.

Right now, riding his bicycle through the chilly Manchester evening, Matthew wondered if Cavendish hadn’t been smarter than the entire room full of lawyers when he’d dictated his wishes. It would be, he couldn’t help but think, a mistake to look at Lady Mary Cavendish as merely a society woman, or her brother the foppish young fool Babbett had claimed him to be. The entire meeting with Babbett and her brother had proven to Matthew that neither sibling would ever be taken for a fool.

She hadn’t seemed shaken by her husband’s death. That made Matthew frown now, as he waved at a shopkeeper and made the turn onto his road. The pneumonia that had taken Edmund Cavendish from the mortal plain was barely two weeks in the past, and his widow had seemed nothing more than about her husband’s demise. He had known better than to expect someone broken and sobbing, but Lady Mary acted as though Cavendish had stepped out on an errand.

Mrs. Byrd had dinner warmed and ready on the table when he arrived. Finding her once he had been hired on at the firm had been a godsend of the highest order. It left Isobel Crawley free to attend her hospital functions, and she was, Matthew found, much happier for it.

“Good evening, Mother,” he said as he came in. “How was your day?”

“Oh, splendid.” As always, there was hospital gossip to be shared, and a story from a committee meeting or something interesting in the papers, or at least an observation on the book she was currently reading. Isobel Crawley did not believe in idleness. 

Matthew ate his dinner and listened to his mother talk, occasionally making observations. When asked how his own day had gone, he pondered the question for a moment.

“Do you know if we’re any relation to the Crawleys at Downton Abbey? I remember Father making an offhand remark about noble relations, but I can’t remember which set he claimed.”

“Downton Abbey,” Isobel said, frowning as she considered it. “That does sound familiar. If you’re talking about the Earl of Grantham, those would be the ones. I believe the tie is a couple of generations back. Why do you ask?”

“I met Lord Downton today. His sister is Lady Mary Cavendish—Edmund Cavendish’s widow. Babbett’s handling his will.”

“Oh, the poor woman. How is she getting on?”

“Stiffest upper lip I have ever seen,” Matthew said. “Babbett brought me in to consult for reasons I can’t really reveal, but she seemed very…composed.”

“That’s hardly surprising,” Isobel said. “Even I know of Mr. Cavendish, so I imagine the drawing room has been so packed, she must by now have her lines perfectly memorized.”

“Like a play, Mother?” Matthew toasted her with his glass. “All the world’s a stage, indeed.”

“It may seem silly to you and me, but they live by a different set of rules. And how did you find the Viscount?”

“Very relaxed,” Matthew said. “At times, it seemed as though he and Lady Mary were communicating and neither Babbett nor I could have any possible idea of what they were saying.” It made him wonder what it would have been liked to have a sibling, if he would have been able to communicate as easily with a brother or a sister as Lady Mary and Simon Crawley had that day. “He asked if we were related, of course. I told him you might know.”

“Well, should you see him again, you’ll be able to report in the positive. I wonder what the Viscount would think of being related to a middle-class lawyer and his nurse of a mother.”

“Upper middle class,” Matthew said. “And I can’t help but think he would be amused by it.” He had a feeling, after all, that Simon Crawley found everything and anything in the world amusing, and that his sister found amusement in nothing at all.

* * *

Three days later found him heavily ensconced in research for a different client than Lady Mary Cavendish, but that, he discovered early on, didn’t stop his thoughts from wandering. There was something about her that wouldn’t leave his mind. It wasn’t the first thought upon waking, but over breakfast, he might remember how she had tilted her head, or how dark her eyes had seemed as she’d regarded him trying to hide his smile. He certainly wondered about her more than could be considered healthy. The infatuation puzzled him, as he simply wasn’t the type to get hung up on somebody he’d only met, and a client besides. Not only that, he would remind himself, but she was also a recently widowed client.

However, the gist of the matter was that she was currently ripping his legendary ability to concentrate to pieces, and that was a problem. Therefore, he was grateful for the distraction when his secretary knocked twice at the door. “Sir, you have visitors.”

“That’s odd,” Matthew said. “I didn’t have any appointments. Who is it, Kipling?”

“Lord Downton and Lady Mary Cavendish, sir.”

“Oh.” Abruptly, he straightened and began to neaten his desk. He wasn’t messy, but it was suddenly vital that his desk be spotless. He rose to his feet and reached for his jacket. “Send them in, please.”

They came in, both in black walking clothes. Simon Crawley led the way, looking eagerly about the office as though he’d rather be nowhere else in the world. Lady Mary seemed a great deal more reserved.

“Crawley! Sorry to just pop in on you,” Simon Crawley said, shaking his hand. “We were out for a walk, enjoying the sunshine, and thought we might settle a wager.”

“A wager?” Matthew asked him before he gave Lady Mary a short bow in greeting. “About what?”

“Whether or not we should call you Cousin Matthew. My sister has reminded me constantly that Crawley is a fairly common name.”

“I don’t know that saying it twice is constant, Simon,” Mary said, rolling her eyes. She did seem amused, though.

“I am sorry to disappoint you, Lady Mary,” Matthew said. “My mother’s memory proved better than mine in this regard, and it turns out we do share a connection. Fourth or fifth cousins, I think it was.”

“Excellent!” Did Simon Crawley ever not smile, Matthew wondered? And did Lady Crawley ever not do the opposite? “Cousin Matthew it is.”

“Would you like some tea?” he asked.

“If it’s no trouble.”

“No trouble, at all.” He pushed the door open slowly, as he feared Kipling might actually be leaning against it, straining to hear. The secretary, though, was sitting too innocently at his desk outside of the office, and practically bolted off to fetch the tea.

When he returned to his desk, Mary and Simon had taken up residence in his visitors’ chairs. It made him think of sitting across the desk from Mary three days before, wondering exactly what was going on behind that implacable mask of hers. The same mask was in place now. She looked politely interested.

He had a suspicion she would manage to look politely interested in anything, even the most boring of law subjects. His old professors would have loved her.

“Did you need any help with that paperwork I gave you?” he asked as he took his seat. “It wasn’t too dense, was it?”

“Not at all. It was informative, but ultimately useless, I’m afraid. I’ve spoken with my brother, and we’ve actually just come from an appointment with the manager of the Johnson Street property.”

“You’ve decided to keep the properties?” Matthew asked.

“Yes. I believe so.”

“She’d be bored otherwise,” Simon put in.

Mary turned her head slightly and gave her brother a look, raising one eyebrow just enough. It was, Matthew discovered, a very effective way to put Lord Downton in his place without saying a word. 

Simon conceded to his sister with a slight bow. “Our meeting, you can expect, was enlightening. We all suspected that Edmund Cavendish was a prince among men for putting up with my sister, but hearing Mr. Stirling confirm it just soothes the soul.”

“Mr. Stirling is the one that should be considered a prince among men,” Mary said to her brother, “for tolerating you poking about as you were. You’re lucky your walking stick was the only casualty.”

Simon proudly held up his walking stick: the very tip was a chewed, splintered mess.

“I see,” Matthew said, though he blinked at the carnage. Since Stirling had given him a tour of the property on Johnson Street, and the machines, he knew exactly how dangerous things were. “You made quite the lucky escape.”

“Indeed.” Simon’s smile could barely be contained as he set the mangled tip of the walking stick down on the carpet. “That would have been an inauspicious start for my sister, I suppose.”

Mary rolled her eyes once more and turned to Matthew, but Kipling arrived with the tea, delaying whatever she had been about to say. Once they were all situated, she looked directly at Matthew once more. “I’m sorry for dropping by without an appointment, but I thought I would like to ask your advice, Mr. Crawley.”

“Matthew, please. Or I suppose it could be Cousin Matthew, if you find that too informal.”

Mary nodded once, as if she had expected that. “Cousin Matthew, then. My late husband might have been able to manage the factories himself and oversee the books and contracts and all of that, but I fear I’m rather lacking in knowledge to handle all of that. If I’m to continue in his place, I have a need to hire people that might see to these tasks for me. It’s a little different than staffing a house.”

Matthew pulled a sheet of paper toward him and inked his pen. “Not altogether. Since Mr. Babbett has trusted me to oversee this area of the estate, I would be happy to help you out. We should put out advertisements in the papers, of course. Mr. Stirling would also be a valuable resource.”

“I do believe you’re right.”

“Has this become a business meeting?” Simon asked, setting his teacup and saucer on the edge of the desk. He looked vaguely horrified. “I thought we merely came to settle a wager.”

“You can go on, if you wish,” Mary said, impatience creeping into her voice. “Send the car back for me once you’ve arrived home.”

“I’ll just walk. Forgive me, but I’ve absolutely no interest in the business, so I’ll bid you adieu, Cousin Matthew.” Simon rose to his feet and gave what was almost a mocking bow. He made it almost to the door before he turned. “Oh, speaking of, it’s always nice to get to know family. Mary, we should invite Cousin Matthew and his family to dinner. Reestablish that old connection.”

Because Mary had turned away from him, Matthew had no idea what look she might have given her brother to make his smile broaden. When she turned, she was as perfectly composed as ever. “Yes,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m rather limited in the society I can entertain at the moment, but you’re family. Please, you should come to dinner, you and your family as well.”

“I’m afraid it’s just my mother and me, making for a rather small party,” Matthew said, wanting very much to look between the siblings and try to figure out what their odd way of communicating had said now. “And we wouldn’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“Nonsense.” Mary’s smile didn’t reach her eyes; Matthew had a feeling Simon would be getting an earful later. “Simon loves to entertain, and we’re about to shut up the house soon.”

“It does need at least one more dinner party to send it off in style,” Simon said. 

Matthew, remembering Isobel’s curiosity about the Viscount, tilted his head. Babbett probably wouldn’t like it much, but Matthew could always claim that the siblings had insisted. Normally, he might have turned down the invitation, but he had to admit that there was something about Lady Mary Cavendish that made him curious.

“I think I would like that, very much,” he said, and it was settled that he and Isobel would come to the Cavendish house for dinner a few days later. 

The minute Simon had left, Mary sighed. “I apologize for that,” she said. “He’s not one for cities or the indoors in general, I’m afraid. You get him too far from a field and you can practically feel him begin to vibrate. I hope we haven’t inconvenienced you too much.”

“Not at all,” Matthew said. “I don’t have any brothers myself, but those I know that do have complained at least once or twice about them. Is he older or younger than you?”

“Younger, by a quarter hour.” Mary sipped her tea. “And surrounded by sisters, as you can imagine, which somehow only makes him more incorrigible. But he’s right in that this turned into a business meeting. I can come back and make a proper appointment for a later date if it’s inconvenient.”

“It’s perfectly fine. You’ve spared me the monotony of research, actually. Where were we?” Matthew looked down at his notes.

When Babbett knocked on his door, twenty minutes later—Kipling must have gone to lunch—he and Mary were discussing what she might need to learn to become more involved in the process. Matthew looked up at the politely displeased visage of his boss, and discovered that, in talking to Mary, his tea had grown cold. 

It looked as though Simon Crawley wasn’t the only one due for an earful, he thought, as Mr. Babbett greeted Mary. Something quite unexpected, however, happened. She gave Mr. Babbett a smile that could only be described as simpering and thanked him for letting her use the “brilliant industrial lawyer they’d procured,” and that she was quite satisfied with Matthew’s work and intended to keep Stockwell, Babbett, and Haims as her lawyers throughout the transition. Perhaps sensing that the meeting had come to an end, she thanked Matthew, reminded him about their upcoming dinner appointment, and left him to the mercies of his boss, letting Babbett see her out of the firm.

It didn’t take long for Babbett to return.

“So, Crawley,” he said, settling into the visitors’ chair and giving Matthew the no-nonsense look that did quite well in court. “We’ve kept Lady Cavendish as a client, I hear?”

“She intends to run the factories herself,” Matthew said, drinking the tea that had grown quite cold. “She sought counsel on the best way to go about that.”

“And dinner?” Babbett asked, his frown deepening.

“It turns out that we’re distant cousins, of all things. Her brother was quite insistent.”

Babbett snorted his opinion of the eccentric Simon Crawley, and Matthew thought, not for the first time, that the man might be underestimating Lord Downton in a serious way. It was better in this case to keep his opinions to himself. “She’s invited my mother and me over to dinner before they close out the house. I expect I’ll also be bringing with me the applications for the post of her new accountant and business manager. I need to be on my way soon to place an ad in the papers on her behalf.”

“Good to see you’ve got it all in hand,” Babbett said, and pushed himself to his feet. “Excellent work, Crawley.”

He left Matthew staring at him in surprise as he left. Those were _not_ the words he had expected from his boss.

* * *

Two days later, on the sixteenth of April, the newspaper on Matthew’s doorstep informed him that the world had changed, and the world’s most unsinkable ship had indeed plummeted to the depths of the sea. It came an hour before a note from Lady Mary Cavendish regretfully informing Matthew that the dinner must be postponed indefinitely, as they were urgently needed in Yorkshire, and to pass on her regrets to his mother.

Matthew was the one who found he regretted the postponement most of all.


	3. In Which There are Many Letters Sent

_October, 1912  
Downton Abbey_

Once she was alone in the sanctuary of her room, Mary allowed herself to rest her head in her hands, pressing her thumb to her forehead in hopes that it might alleviate some of the dull ache residing there. She reminded herself once more that she loved her family, that grief was a difficult time for everybody, and the Crawleys could be no exception. Harsh words flung during that time weren’t meant.

But sweet mercy, did it sting when that grief was used as a measurement—especially when that same measurement proved she had been weighed and found wanting.

It had started with a cutting remark she’d been unable to hold back. Edith, wearing a black dress as well, as Patrick’s name had now officially been listed among the victims of the Titanic’s drowning, had taken offense, as she was wont to do. Cora had desperately attempted to referee, but the quarrel had escalated until Edith had snapped across the table that Patrick may not have been her husband yet, but at least she had the decency to mourn him like a proper loved one.

The sally had found its mark. Everyone in the household, after all, knew by now that Mary hadn’t loved Edmund Cavendish. She missed him, certainly, as one misses a constant companion that is suddenly called away, but it was not the deep grief of losing one’s true love. In truth, she felt a sense of resentment toward him for daring to be dead. She also partially loathed him for leaving her the factories. Her life would be so much simpler without them and the doubt they had caused. Granted, she would be bored, but she’d lived her life in the quiet recesses of Downton Abbey. She could have returned to that without any trouble.

After all, it was as though nothing had changed. She slept in her old room. With no children—no heir—to show for her marriage, there had been no need to make special arrangements. To her parents, part of her would always be that gangly child, aiding Simon in torturing one governess after the next, usually because they were too quick to understand the lessons and would grow bored and agitated in the schoolroom. Sometimes, now, the only difference seemed to be that she bore the name Cavendish instead of Crawley.

With a sigh, she picked up her pen and began to fiddle with the nib, as it had spurted ink the night before. She had letters to write: one to her manager, another to Matthew, who had been handling the legal matters in the day-to-day management of the factories. He’d made quick work of finding her a reliable accountant; his superiors at the firm evidently approved of how involved he was otherwise, as he’d been at his leisure to assist Mary extensively.

A knock at the door of her study—Papa’s old study, when he had been Lord Downton instead of Lord Grantham—interrupted her as she finished the first letter. “Come in.”

Simon poked his head in. “Sybil and I are taking Pearl and Dusty for a gallop. Care to join us?”

She would have loved to saddle Diamond and let the horse have his head, to race across the grounds and forget about all of the figures and projections her accountant had sent her the day before, but the man was expecting a reasonably quick reply. She also needed these letters gone with the evening post. “Unfortunately, I can’t.”

Simon clicked his tongue. “All work and no play make Mary a dull girl.”

“You should take Edith,” Mary said, the throbbing in her head returning. “Her horse could use a bit of exercise and besides, a good gallop might dislodge the foul mood she seems intent to spill all over the rest of us.”

“Not fair, Mary,” Simon said.

Mary simply rolled her eyes and returned to the letter. She didn’t give a fig about fairness.

“Another long missive to your numbers fellow?” Simon asked, nodding at the letter. 

“Cousin Matthew,” Mary said, wishing he wouldn’t be so nosy when she was trying to think.

“Oh, do pass on my regards.”

“I will, provided you leave me in peace.”

Simon continued to lean on the doorjamb. Like hers, his build was spare, though he generally instructed his tailor to keep the clothing loose so that it might give him a little more bulk. Nobody had had the heart to tell him it did nothing of the sort.

“I’ve been thinking about inviting him,” he said.

“Inviting him where?”

“To Downton.”

Mary slowly turned away from her letter, the better to stare at her brother in his ridiculously loose riding gear.

“His mother, too,” Simon said.

“Why?”

“They’re family.”

“Barely. Granny will eat them both alive.”

“I know.” Simon’s grin flashed.

“You are not using my lawyer in your games,” Mary said. “If you want to play at upsetting Papa and Granny, you’ll have to find some other innocents to abuse. Cousin Matthew has been invaluable to me these past six months, and I’m hardly going to thank him by feeding him to the wolves.”

“Ease up, sister mine,” Simon said, laughing now. “Wolves?”

Mary tilted her head.

“Perhaps unfair,” Simon said. “But possibly true. I was merely joking, you know. I’d like to invite Matthew up because, despite the short acquaintance, I rather liked him. Also, it’s a novelty to be related to a practicing lawyer and instead of you going down to Manchester all the time, he could come up here, spend a few days getting to know the rest of the family.”

“A family in mourning,” Mary said, sighing as she inked her pen. She didn’t write, however. Instead, she took the time to consider. They _were_ a family in mourning: the loss of Patrick Crawley and his father in the icy waters of the Atlantic had struck Simon and Edith the hardest. Edith had lost her fiancé, but Simon had lost his closest companion. With most of the other titled families avoiding theirs out of possible superstition, Mary could suddenly understand the loneliness. “It will be some time yet, I think, but you should talk Mama into inviting them if you’re so set on it.”

“Excellent. Been awhile since we shook things up around here,” Simon said, and, waving his riding cap at her, set off.

Mary gave one fleeting thought to joining them, sighed, and stared at the blank page before her on the desk. She had, she realized, completely forgotten what she was going to write.

* * *

_November, 1912  
Manchester_

The envelope from Lady Mary Cavendish that arrived that morning made Matthew frown. He’d been anticipating its arrival—Mary had always been a careful and considerate correspondent, answering his letters in a timely manner in the months he had been assisting her—but it was a great deal thicker than expected. He discovered why when he slit open the outer envelope. It contained not only a business letter, but a brief note requesting that he deliver the enclosed envelope to his mother on her behalf. There was also a second envelope, addressed to him. A brief study of the handwriting against that of Mary, which was similar, led him to surmise that this was Simon Crawley’s work. The two would have studied under the same tutor for penmanship.

What on earth Simon Crawley would be writing to him for, he had no idea. He set that envelope to the side as he read over the business letter first, as Babbett would expect a report on that. Things were progressing nicely for their client, and Babbett was pleased: Mary had sold off her house in Manchester, opting to keep a set of apartments nearer the properties for her use whenever she came into town. Babbett had overseen that, leaving Matthew to handle the business end of things, as he did now, making notes on the changes Mary wanted and thinking, not for the first time, that Edmund Cavendish had hoodwinked them all from the grave. His widow certainly seemed to have a much more sensible head on her shoulders than anybody at the firm had thought.

Once he’d finished reading, he looked at his notes, collected fresh sheets of paper, and began to write the missives that would be necessary to ensure her orders were carried out. He’d need to do a bit more research for one of her questions, he noted, and wasn’t surprised that he looked forward to it. Satisfied now that he’d begun his due diligence, he picked up the envelope from Simon Crawley and opened it, wondering what Lord Downton would have to say to the likes of him.

It was an invitation to visit. They had a shooting party right after the new year began, Simon’s letter informed him, and given everything that happened in 1912, it was going to be a smaller party than usual. As the Earl of Grantham had expressed a desire to meet the long-lost relatives, would Matthew and Isobel consider making up the final addition to the shooting party?

Matthew leaned back in his chair as he pondered this. He had been shooting before—one of his mates at Oxford had had an estate in the south and had invited Matthew along for a couple of holidays—but truth be told, he was terrible at it, so terrible that Nigel had clapped him on the shoulder and told him that from now on, he should probably stick to cricket.

He wasn’t much better at cricket, honestly, but Matthew hadn’t had the heart to tell his friend that.

They were due to spend the Christmas holiday with his mother’s cousins in Kent, but they would be back in plenty of time to ring in the new year. Matthew had intended to while away the rest of his leave with friends in Manchester and lazily rereading some of the old classics he hadn’t had a chance to peruse since his days at Oxford.

He found himself rather curious, though, about what Downton Abbey might be like, and how Lady Mary Cavendish—for he couldn’t deny that his thoughts went to her far more than they should have—spent her days on that estate in Yorkshire. In addition, there were no connections left of his father’s, save the Crawleys at the abbey, so his curiosity turned that way as well.

But it didn’t stop him from presenting his mother with the envelope addressed to her.

“Who could that possibly be from?” Isobel asked, puzzled, as she reached for her knife.

“The Lady Grantham, I expect,” Matthew said. 

“The Lady Gran—Matthew, what business would the Countess of Grantham have writing to me? The connection is a distant one at best.”

“As you can see, I’ve not opened it,” Matthew said, smiling as he helped himself from the tureen. Mrs. Byrd’s cooking smelled more delicious than usual tonight, which was a mean feat, given that the woman was a master in her kitchen. “I couldn’t possibly hope to tell you the contents, as I’ve not yet developed a way to read through paper.”

Isobel _tsk_ ed at him, though she was smiling as she did so. Her expression changed quickly to shock once she had unfolded the letter.

“Well?” Matthew asked.

“We’ve been invited to Downton Abbey to celebrate the new year with family. Apparently, the Earl of Grantham has been wanting to make our acquaintance.”

“Very generous of him,” Matthew said, concealing his smile.

“I suppose I’ll write back in the affirmative,” Isobel said. “You won’t be too put out to cut our trip to Kent short, will you?”

“By the time we make our escape every year, Mother, you vow to cut the next year’s trip shorter.” This was, of course, something Isobel Crawley had managed to forget by the time October rolled around and the invitations were issued anew for holiday parties.

Isobel tapped the letter against the edge of the table, obviously thinking about something or other. “I suspect this is on behalf of that client of yours you refuse to tell me about.”

“There isn’t much to tell,” Matthew said. “She’s managed rather well, all told, but the story isn’t a very interesting one.”

“Well,” Isobel said, giving a tiny, bouncy shrug, “soon I shall discover what she’s like for myself. And won’t that be fascinating? Ringing in the new year with the Earl of Grantham. What will they think of next?”

Indeed, Matthew thought, turning his focus fully to the soup.

* * *

_December, 1912  
Downton Village_

Matthew stepped onto the train platform, automatically reaching up to assist Isobel down, and looked around. He felt a spurt of disappointment not to see Mary anywhere, though he knew it was ridiculous to expect her to meet them at the train, not when she had said in her letter that a chauffeur would meet them. There was much to be done in preparation for the annual hunt, Matthew imagined, and the servant’s ball they had been invited to stay for.

She was, however, waiting for him at the abbey. The car had bowled along through a nice bit of forest and a quaint little village, and finally up the lane to what had to be one of the most impressive buildings Matthew had ever seen. He and Isobel had toured some of the country seats a few years before during one of his holidays from school, but very few of them matched Downton Abbey for sheer beauty. The massive hall—done up in the Jacobean style, he couldn’t help but notice—rose up over the manicured lawns and walking paths. He imagined that in the spring and summer, it was downright stunning. Waiting on the graveled front walk was Lady Mary Cavendish, Lord Simon Crawley, and a woman that surely had to be their mother.

“Crawley!” Simon called, breaking ranks first as he strode up to Matthew. “You made it, excellent! Any trouble?”

“None whatsoever. I apologize for the train delay and any trouble we put your chauffeur through.”

“Nonsense, Whitby’s used to it. The trains never run anywhere on time in these parts.”

The round of introductions that followed told Matthew that he had guessed right about the Countess, Cora. Two young women that had waited inside were introduced as Mary’s younger sisters: Lady Edith and Lady Sybil, both of whom he was instructed to call Cousin. Robert Crawley, it appeared, had been called away to handle flooding in one of the tenanted buildings, but he would be joining them for dinner.

“You’ll get to meet Granny then, too,” Simon said. “Keep your guard up with that one.”

“Simon,” Sybil said, swatting at her brother. “That’s not very nice! You know deep down that Granny is a gentle soul.”

“Very deep down,” Mary said, smiling at Matthew as he and Isobel handed their coats to the stern-faced butler, Carson. The man’s expression had yet to change, which was a bit daunting to Matthew. He couldn’t help but think that everybody that might disapprove of his lot in this house, the butler might be the worst.

Simon told Carson that he’d see Matthew up to the guest chambers, while the women headed off with Isobel. Matthew turned to watch Mary go, but she didn’t seem to notice.

When he turned back, Simon had already begun walking up the stairs, forcing him to hurry to keep up.

“Murray—that’s the family lawyer, you know—he’s done some research into just how closely related we are,” Simon said, bounding up two steps at a time. Inside, Downton Abbey was just as remarkable as the façade suggested, though it was also a bit cold. It took everything Matthew had not to stare up at the staircase, or the wainscoting, and keep up with Simon. “It turns out with—with Patrick and his father gone, you’re actually my heir.”

Matthew nearly stumbled, positive that he had not heard that correctly. Surely, Simon had to be mistaken: he was a middle-class lawyer, in no way in line to become an earl. 

“Granny fears you’re here to murder us,” Simon continued, as Matthew stared at him in shock. “So that you may rise to become the new Earl of Grantham.”

“Trust me,” Matthew said, looking around the house in a daze now, “I’ve no desire to do so.”

“That’s what I told her, but you know Granny. Well, no, you don’t, not yet.” Simon grinned. “She’s horrified. I told her that a job isn’t like a disease that might be caught, but that hardly reassured her at all. Ah, here we are, the bachelors’ wing. Mary’s pleased you accepted the invitation, by the way.”

“Is she?” She’d hardly seemed like it.

“Of course. Now she has somebody to talk to about all of those infernal numbers of hers. I warn her that she’ll do permanent damage to her eyes, squinting at those ledgers like she always does, but what do I know? I’m just the brother. Here you go, this is you. Will your valet be joining you from a later train?”

Matthew blinked. “I’ve no need of a valet.”

Simon laughed. “This is going to be such fun. I’ll have Carson send up one of the footmen to see to you. Trust me, you’ll need it. Now, I’ll let you get changed. If you want to talk business, Mary should be in her study or the library soon. Just ask one of the servants and they can show you around, or you can come find me once you’ve washed away the travel dust, and I can show you the grounds.”

He left Matthew to his new bedchamber, which already held his trunk, much to his disbelief. The servants must work very quickly, which was even more amazing to him, given the size of the abbey. The abbey, he realized, to which he was heir—after Simon, that was. That was something he had never even foreseen at all. To Matthew, it seemed that there was a gulf between him and the upstanding, upper-class Crawleys, who had been bred for a society life. He was no slouch, but nothing could change the fact that he had an occupation and a very middle-class lifestyle. It seemed that the only thing that could possibly connect him to this lifestyle, with its silent, efficient servants, was shared blood, and not very much of it at that.

Frowning, he opened up the lid to the trunk. He’d learned later that what had called Mary away from Manchester had been the death of her cousins on the Titanic. Those must have been the previous heirs, he thought. It hardly mattered: Simon Crawley was young, hale and hearty, and no doubt he’d marry at an acceptable time and continue the Crawley line, widening that gulf between Matthew and Downton Abbey. Matthew could only be grateful for it. He was a self-made man, as his father had been before him, and he wasn’t sure he would have liked what changes the likes of an estate this size and an earldom would require of him. The next Crawley to be the Earl of Grantham would be Simon, not Matthew, and they would all be better off for it.


	4. In Which There are Two Very Earnest Conversations

_December 31, 1912  
Downton Abbey_

Mary had, in truth, she had expected Matthew to spend his time either holed up with her father in the library or wandering the estate with Simon. Her father and Matthew were already fast friends, she knew. Robert Crawley liked the young solicitor, as he’d proven to have a brain in his head, and Robert had always valued intelligence. And it was obvious to everybody that Matthew now filled many roles: Cousin Matthew, Matthew the Solicitor, Matthew Crawley, Simon’s heir should the worst happen. He and his mother were fascinating on the nature of being middle class alone, and the Crawleys of Downton Abbey regarded them rather like some foreign animals in a zoo exhibit. Mary didn’t expect to spend much time alone with Matthew on his stay because of that.

But it was on the second day of Matthew’s stay that he found her out at the temple on the western part of the estate, as if he had been seeking her. Clearly this wasn’t the case, as she saw Matthew’s eyes, still as bright as the first day she’d seen him, widen as he rounded the bend and took her in. “Oh,” he said. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t know anybody was here.”

Mary straightened so that she was sitting up like a proper lady, the heavy black dress rustling about her as it always did. She’d been enjoying her reprieve from the prim and the proper. “It’s rather a good hiding place until it’s discovered, and I’m flushed out like prey.”

“If you like, I can keep going and pretend I never saw you.”

“No, the game’s passed, and I lost. The rules dictate that I should cede my defeat with grace.” 

When Matthew continued to stand there, as if he really wasn’t certain what he could say to make it better, she sighed again. Her foul mood really was going to taint everything today. “I’m afraid I’m not very good company.”

“More reason for me to continue on my way, then,” Matthew said. 

“And that will only confirm my suspicions that I’m being ungracious,” Mary said with a sigh. She began to brush off her skirts. The infernal black hid dirt rather well, but the stones on the temple steps were chalky, which showed rather starkly against the dark cloth. She should have foreseen that. “I was hiding, but I suppose the time for that has come to an end. Would you care to join me?”

“Only if it does not appear that I am hiding, too.” Matthew took a seat a safe distance away from her. “Though I suppose I am. This house, it’s rather large, isn’t it? I always fear I’m going to say the wrong thing and there will be the dowager countess, giving me that look I’m sure she learned from my old schoolmasters.”

“Granny enjoys being intimidating. In some ways, she and the house are very much the same.”

“Works of art?” Matthew asked, smiling.

Some of Mary’s foul mood slipped away as she found herself laughing. 

“She’s asked me to pay her a call,” Matthew went on. “I’m not sure why. Possibly to check my pedigree. Or my teeth.” He bared them at Mary, like a horse, and earned a second laugh from her. “Here I was, assuming myself a very distant cousin, and she spends the entire meal last night eyeing me as though Cousin Simon and Cousin Robert might simultaneously fall to the ground, dead on the spot, and make me an earl. It’s a very daunting prospect for a working class lawyer.”

“With all that Granny’s lived through, I suppose she likes to prepare for the worst. I sometimes feel she’ll outlive us all.” 

“The Lady Grantham, presiding over Downton Abbey and all of Yorkshire, whacking people about the knees with that cane of hers, for centuries to come?”

“You laugh,” Mary said, though she was laughing as well, “but see if it doesn’t come true! If you like, I’ll come along when you pay that call, help protect you from my grandmother.”

“I’m not sure it’s entirely chivalrous to hide behind you, but I accept.”

“We’ll go for tea,” Mary said. “Don’t let her fool you: she loves unexpected company. We should collect Sybil or Simon to come along with us.”

“I believe Cousin Sybil was in the library when I saw her last,” Matthew said, and once Mary had brushed off the final remnants of chalk from her skirt, they set off together. “I’m to understand you won’t be part of the shooting party tomorrow?”

“Unfortunately,” Mary said. “I’ve accompanied the party for a few years now, but this year…” She gave a half-shrug. Her situation was one she had come to accept, though it dragged on her more than she liked to admit, and certainly more than she showed her family. She had been Edmund Cavendish’s bride for only eight months, roughly the same amount of time she had now been a widow. “It will be some time before it’s acceptable for me to do so again.”

“I see,” Matthew said. “Do you enjoy it, the shooting?”

“Yes. And hunting, too, naturally. All families like ours hunt. Do you ride? We typically host the opening weekend here at Downton—or I should say that my father does.” She’d married, after all, which meant she wasn’t truly a Crawley anymore, no matter how much it felt like most days, nothing had changed.

“Not very well.” A rueful smile graced Matthew’s features. “I mostly stick to my bicycle, and you can’t really hunt foxes from that.”

“I imagine it confuses the hounds, also.”

“Oh, terribly. They’ve asked me to refrain from hunting in the streets of Manchester, out of consideration for the poor foxhounds there. I’ve decided it’s much better if I keep to what I do best, and remain the rather boring solicitor.”

“We all have our calling,” Mary said, though she wasn’t sure if that was the truth or not. She’d thought she had found her calling in being Edmund’s wife. After all, she might not have loved him, but he had suited her needs: the right breeding, new money, power, intelligence. Even more than that, she had respected him. Marrying him had been the next step in a life plan that her mother and grandmother had likely schemed about while she and Simon were still in their cradles, as she had known early on that she would never be one of those great, adventuring heroines in the books she read, facing down all manner of trouble and making love matches in spite of it. No, Lady Mary Crawley, as she had been then, was far too practical for that, so her mother’s life plan and Edmund had been ideal.

Now she had nothing but a great deal of money, properties to manage, and a sense of displacement that she could never shake. No wonder, she thought, she had sought a hiding place on a bitterly cold day.

“That reminds me,” Matthew said, and she tried to shake her irritable thoughts away. She hadn’t meant to lose the jollity, odd though it was. “I took the liberty of meeting with Mr. Stirling and Mr. Fitzpatrick on Friday, before Mother and I came to Yorkshire. I thought it might be best to present their reports in person that both factories are managing quite nicely. There was a small fire in the Johnson Street property.”

“Was anyone injured?”

“No, according to Stirling, the men were quick to put out the flames. Very little was damaged. He’s sending up a full report that should be here any day now.”

“You didn’t think to bring this up before?”

“It was a small fire,” Matthew said. “You likely won’t even see a loss in profits, though you’re right, I should have told you right away. I apologize for that oversight on my part. I must confess, I’m still trying to wrap my head around…”

Being third in line for the earldom, Mary realized. It really had been exactly like Simon to drop such momentous news on Matthew like he had. Most of the time, Simon was far too clever for his own good. Once one added a dollop of restlessness and a healthy dose of what could be considered almost an anthropological study of humanity—especially their family—Simon could really cause trouble when he set his mind to it. 

“Well,” she said, attempting to brighten up, “if the fire is as minor as you claim, no point in worrying about it until I receive Mr. Stirling’s report, is there? Come, we’ll head inside and hunt up somebody to come along to Granny’s for tea. Even better than dropping in unexpected is dropping in with a large party in tow.”

Matthew gave her a wary look. “You and Cousin Simon,” he said at length, “have much more in common than your looks, don’t you?”

“I couldn’t possibly begin to know what you mean, Cousin Matthew.”

Conversation turned back to the reports from her managers, who had sent greetings for the new year, and to a discussion of morale in the factories, which Matthew noted had improved, thanks to the fact that Mary had insisted Edmund’s tradition of gifting the workers with extra wages continue on. It hadn’t occurred to Mary that the men might be worried that this might not happen. Perhaps, if somebody else had taken over the business, that might have been the case, but Mary had been raised at the knee of Lord Grantham, who believed above all things that kindness was vital in the treatment of one’s workers. It didn’t lead to a perfect household, but it certainly paved the way for a much nicer one.

“You know, the factories are certainly turning a nice profit,” Matthew said as they finally reached the abbey. “I believe, looking at the old projections, Mr. Cavendish had even hoped to expand in 1913.”

“Well, that’s simply out of the question,” Mary said immediately.

Matthew turned to give her a surprised look. “Is it? Why?”

She gave him a perplexed look. “Because I’m not Edmund, naturally. I haven’t the business acumen to look into expanding whatever idea he had in mind for his empire next. I feel like I’m barely keeping my head above water with the two factories he left me, as it is. Expanding? Some days I feel like I’m playing at a game, pretending to run a business and nothing more.”

“Well, if it’s make-believe, you’ve certainly fooled a lot of people into thinking it very real, Cousin Mary.” 

Mary feltwarmth begin to collect behind her sternum, spreading through her, at the look he gave her. She’d been admired before—it was impossible to be the daughter of an earl and not be admired, even if her dowry hadn’t been very large—but never quite like this. Matthew was looking at her as though he admired her not for her looks or for her lineage, but as one might respect a colleague. It wasn’t the ardent look of a lover, but she felt a blush rise nonetheless.

It was for the best, then, that Simon opened the front door and stepped out, drawing up short at the sight of them standing on the walk. They’d stopped walking at some point, Mary realized.

“Oh, good,” Simon said, giving Mary the briefest of puzzled looks before he turned to Matthew. “We’ve been summoned, you and I. Granny wants us to report to the dower house for tea. I was just about to set off to look for you, but it seems Mary’s found you first. Excellent.”

Matthew opened his mouth, possibly about to correct that notion. After a second, he closed his mouth, evidently taking this in stride. “Yes. Cousin Mary and I were on our way to find you, actually, for the tea.”

“Gents only, I’m afraid,” Simon said. He turned to Mary. “Mama and Edith are in the drawing room, asking after you. It’ll be up to Matthew and me to face down Granny by ourselves.”

“I wish you good luck with that,” Mary said, working up a smile.

“We’ll need it. Come, man, I could do with the walk,” Simon said, clapping Matthew on the shoulder and setting off.

Matthew, however, took a moment before he followed Simon. “Do give the idea of expansion some thought. I have the feeling you’ll find it more appealing than you think.”

“I will,” Mary said, giving him a nod as she turned to go inside. Though the day was cold, and the house not much warmer, she still felt improbably heated as she handed her outer things to Carson and went into the drawing room to have tea with her mother and her sister.

* * *

He’d had no idea that accepting an assignment from Josiah Babbett in April—a matter of industrial law, of course, as he had been hired for that specialty—would lead to drinking tea with a dowager countess, a viscount, and his mother on the last day of 1912. Of course, Matthew thought as he warily helped himself to a tea cake, very little could have ever prepared him for that eventuality. Given that he had never lived an extraordinary life, being entirely middle of the line in virtually everything he did (save for being a terrible shot) and almost mundane, it seemed even harder to accept.

The tea cake was tart. The flavor did nothing to ease the surreal feeling spreading through him.

He wished, not for the first time since he and Simon had strolled up the front walk of the dower house, that Mary had indeed come along to act as his proverbial shield. Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, had eyes even sharper than her tongue, and whenever she looked at Matthew, he felt as though his recurring nightmare, in which he attended school in nothing more than his pants. Even though he was fully dressed, and an adult with a viable position at a prestigious Manchester firm, it did nothing to stop the feeling of wanting to squirm under Cousin Violet’s suspicious gaze.

Thankfully, Isobel Crawley was not at all cowed by Violet, making her the only person in the room to do so. For all of his bluster about “Granny’s bark being worse than her bite,” Matthew had noticed that Simon Crawley certainly didn’t use as much cheek in the presence of Lady Grantham as he did around the rest of his family. He sat next to Isobel, making idle comments that made the older women smile. He’d been delighted, he claimed, to find that Isobel had preceded them, as the opportunity to get to know family better was one to be cherished.

Matthew imagined Mary rolling her eyes at Simon’s fripperies, and had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.

“Mary tells me you handle all of the legal aspects of this business folly of hers,” Violet said, staring through Matthew.

Folly? Matthew blinked at that, but the woman seemed completely serious—and about her own granddaughter, as well. “She’s a client of my firm, yes. I primarily oversee her case, though, as the estate is settled and it mostly has to do with any proceedings she needs handled for her business.”

Violet pursed her lips. “And what do you think of this, of Cavendish leaving factories to his wife? It’s simply not done.”

Isobel sat up straighter. “Why not? Doesn’t she have as much right to her husband’s property as anyone?”

“Well, no,” Violet Crawley said. “Of course not. A woman in the boardroom? What is the world coming to?”

Matthew kept his gaze focused on his teacup, partly amused to hear the opinions of Josiah Babbett—a more middle-class man Matthew had never known—coming from the lips of the blue-blooded Lady Grantham herself.

“I think,” he said, “that the Lady Mary is remarkably intelligent and quite up to the task.”

Violet stared at him in surprise. “No one’s questioning that, my dear boy, at all. It’s quite obvious. The problem isn’t with Mary’s capability, it’s with the idea of a woman running a business and trying to survive in the realm of men when she should be grieving for her husband.”

Those, Matthew knew, had been the same objections both Babbett and Mary had raised upon hearing about Cavendish’s wishes. “She’s thinking of expanding,” he said. It was partly a lie—he’d only given her the idea a half hour before, and he’d seen the shock evident on her face that it hadn’t even occurred to her—but to hear Violet Crawley speak like that set his teeth on edge. It made him think of that gulf once more, widening with every word the woman spoke.

“Expanding?” Violet asked, and her eyes turned shrewd.

“Yes, from everything Matthew tells me,” Isobel said, “the business is doing quite well.”

“Truly?” Violet looked from Isobel to Matthew. He gave a short nod. Thankfully, with Violet Crawley, there was rarely a need to say much more. She leaned back slightly, hands still clutching the handle of her cane, obviously deep in thought. “To think that we’ve had a magnate on our hands this entire time and no idea of it at all. She must get it from her mother; they’re quite like sharks on that side of the family.”

Simon chuckled as he set his teacup down. “You’re calling Grandfather a shark? I’m not sure Grandmother would like that, Granny. Not very sporting of you.”

“Sporting? I’ve little time for sporting, young Simon, and once you get to be my age, you’ll learn not to waste your time. Speaking of wasting time, what’s this I hear of your name in connection with Lady Jessup’s youngest daughter?”

“Pure fiction,” Simon said. “She was there when I paid a call to the Jessups to see that new revolver Lord Jessup’s been boasting about. Hardly scandalous, I assure you.”

Violet harrumphed. “You’re not getting any younger,” she told him.

“Granny,” Simon said, laughing now. “I’m fresh out of university! Surely there’s a grace period before you and Mama march me down the aisle to where some unfortunate heiress awaits.”

Matthew glanced at Isobel, grateful that he hadn’t ever had to face this particular problem. His parents had made a love match of it, he knew, and they’d claimed time and again that they wouldn’t pressure him to marry, like so many of their generation. Isobel, perhaps reading his thoughts, smiled at him and sipped her tea.

“With Patrick and James gone, you have a duty, m’boy,” Violet told Simon. 

Lines tightened around Simon’s mouth, almost imperceptibly, but he smiled at his grandmother. “Worried that I may take a long walk off a short cliff and leave Downton to a complete stranger, Granny?”

“Of course not,” Violet said. “But I’ve come to learn to expect the worst.”

“No need to fear the worst,” Simon said. “Even if I were to leap off this mortal coil this evening, we wouldn’t be leaving Downton and all of its inhabitants to a stranger. I have my heir right here.”

He turned to grin at Matthew, who felt that sinking feeling in his stomach that seemed to arise whenever the thought of being in the line to inherit the earldom arose. Simon might think it a grand joke, but he could see plainly in Violet Crawley’s eyes that a working-class lawyer, as he’d called himself to Mary earlier that very day, inheriting Downton Abbey might very well be the definition of “the worst” she had in mind.

Don’t worry, Cousin Violet, he thought silently at her. I happen to agree.


	5. In Which Matthew and Simon Discuss the Crawley Sisters

_June, 1913  
Manchester, England_

The last thing Mary had expected was for Edith to accept her invitation to Manchester—it hadn’t been a serious invitation, more a begrudging one, offered because Simon had goaded her into it—and leave London behind while the Season was in full swing, but it was Edith, and not Simon, that accompanied her as she headed up the walk to the apartments she kept in the more fashionable part of the city. She’d sold Cavendish House the year before and had purchased property in a less filthy part of the city—a woman had to have standards, or so she’d told Josiah Babbett. Truthfully, one had to go far in Manchester to get away from the smog and dirt, so it wasn’t completely ideal, but Mary liked to think that the property’s orientation on a hill spared it part of the bother.

Anna had come along with Edith and Mary. Mary’s maid hadn’t wanted to come to Downton after Edmund had passed away, as her family was in Manchester, and Mary hadn’t hired on another. With two of her three charges in Manchester, it had made more sense for Anna to come and leave Sybil’s care to O’Brien. Like Edith, Anna didn’t seem overjoyed to be trading down London for Manchester, even if it was only for a fortnight while Mary met with her accountant and her managers, but Mary suspected that had more to do with a burgeoning romance than anything else.

“So this is it,” Mary said needlessly at the front walk. “Not quite as grand as Cavendish House was, I’m afraid.”

“No,” Edith agreed, looking up at the building’s façade. She focused her attention back on Mary. “It’s quite nice, though.”

That was more civil than Mary had expected. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who had been talked into sheathing her claws for this trip. Or perhaps Edith simply wanted something, which was far more likely.

She pondered over what that could be as she left Edith, once they’d been greeted by the servants. There were reports from the housekeeper to look over, which she did right away, as she intended to be busy for the rest of her stay. Given that the apartments were shut up for most of the year, there wasn’t much to cover, but Mrs. Callow certainly liked to cover what little there was in great detail. By the time she had been freed from talking with her housekeeper, Mary’s head was ringing.

She found Edith in the library. Edmund’s books had been transferred over first thing; she’d attempted to add to his collection, inserting more classics among the industrial theory tomes, but other things had unfortunately taken priority. She wasn’t as far along as she would have liked to be. “All settled in?”

“Yes,” Edith said, putting down the book she had been studying. “I see you’re on your way to matching Papa’s library.”

“Hardly,” Mary said, laughing at the absurdity of the thought. Their father prided himself on having built up the library. Those books, Simon liked to jest, were his fifth child. “But I like to think I’m making inroads. Take anything you like, of course.”

“Thank you,” Edith said, and again, Mary wondered at the civility.

“I’m afraid you might need them,” she said, “as my schedule is rather tied up for this trip and I unfortunately haven’t kept up with many of my acquaintances that you might call upon here. I’m not here frequently enough for it to matter.”

“Why would you want to be?” Edith asked, looking out the window.

Mary found that she agreed with that sentiment. Even though London had little to offer her for another year yet, she much preferred the crush of the Season to the dirt of Manchester.

“I was wondering perhaps if I might come go with you,” Edith said before Mary had had a chance to reply. “You’re inspecting the factories tomorrow, aren’t you?”

Mary blinked at her sister. “You want to come along with me to inspect the factories?” 

“If I may.”

“I see no problem with it, if you truly want to. I can’t promise you it will be anything interesting.” Mary had looked over the reports from her accountant and her other advisors, which had assured her that the new machinery was quite vital to the vision she had for the company, of course. But other than it making a great deal of noise and “generating more efficiency,” she didn’t know what she expected it to do. Still, appearances had to be kept up. “We’ll set off right after breakfast.”

“Splendid,” Edith said.

“You must promise not to poke about, though. Simon came in and mucked about in every machine in the factory, I swear, and we’re lucky that the only thing he lost was the tip of his walking stick.”

She’d never seen anybody go from white to red as quickly as Stirling had that day.

“Trust me,” Edith said, “I value my limbs far more than Simon seems to care for his. I admit to being rather curious about how everything is made in these factories of yours. Also, I suspect Papa will want a full report.”

That threw Mary for a loop. “Papa?” she asked. “He could have just asked me directly, I would have been happy to tell him.”

“He likely doesn’t want you to think he’s hovering,” Edith said, turning her attention to her book. “You have been rather intent on doing this on your own, after all, and you won’t take a lick of advice from anybody but that accountant of yours and Cousin Matthew.”

“Well, that’s simply not true,” Mary said, blinking at her sister.

“Is it?” Edith gave her a dubious look, and they were spared from any more conversation by the need to dress for dinner, which the cook had been very excited to prepare for her mistress and the lady’s sister. Edith didn’t bring up the topic again, though Mary wondered about it all through dinner.

The factory tour the next day proceeded without any unfortunate accidents, much, Mary thought, to Stirling’s relief. The manager stammered at first; Mary ignored that, as the man had been expecting only her—a known quantity—and had instead received two daughters of an earl for his trouble. Edith, dressed quite prettily in a walking dress that made Mary’s black clothing seem all the much more plain, seemed genuinely interested in the machinery as they walked by, asking question after question of Mr. Tidwell, the factory’s engineer.

Mary nodded politely at the explanations of how each piece of machinery worked, though most of the technical explanations meant very little. She was more interested in the morale. The men, she noticed, all seemed to have cleaned up for the visit, as faces were indeed more scrubbed than she recalled from her previous visits. A few openly gawked at the Lady Crawley and the Lady Cavendish as they walked by, but she was well-used to that. Instead, she listened to Mr. Stirling as she talked and tried to ignore just how Edith tilted her head at Mr. Tidwell and giggled at his statements like a ninny. By the time they reached Mr. Stirling’s office, Mary was almost concerned that her eyes might disconnect themselves from their sockets, she’d rolled them so often. Every flirtatious question asked of Mr. Tidwell made her grit her teeth harder.

The very minute she could, she pulled Edith away, excusing both of them politely from the group. She towed Edith around to a small hallway where they wouldn’t be overheard. “Must you be so obvious?”

“Whatever are you talking about?”

“You’re twittering like a silly jay. ‘Oh, Mr. Tidwell, how does this work, pray tell?’ ‘You’re so strong! What does this lever do?’”

Edith’s face took on a mutinous set that Mary remembered well. “Forgive me for being interested in a business you are trying to run. One of us has to be.”

“And just what do you mean by that?”

“You haven’t paid a whit of attention to anything the man has said about the technology, and this is the core of your business! How are you even going to run things if you don’t know anything about it?”

“That’s what I’ve hired men for,” Mary said, rolling her eyes yet again. “Mama doesn’t know the minute to minute whereabouts of every boot-boy at Downton, and yet the house has never fallen down around our ears.”

Edith, however, had always known which nerve to strike, and how to strike it repeatedly. “Mama takes an interest in how the house is actually run.”

“And so do I with my business,” Mary said. “I’m simply not obvious or pathetic about it, nor do I use it to flirt with unsuitable men.”

“Flirt?” Edith gave her a scandalized look. “I’d hardly call _interest_ flirting! And how do you know Mr. Tidwell is unsuitable? He is an educated man.”

“An educated man not of our class. Edith, have you gone mad? You have no business casting doe eyes at him. If Mama knew—”

“The world is changing,” Edith said. “Things are different now.”

“Some things never change,” Mary said, and felt an odd pang she couldn’t decipher. The words sounded strangely false to her own ears, and she had not the slightest idea why.

Edith’s face contorted into another look Mary recognized. It was the warning sign that preceded a parting shot. Indeed, when Edith began to speak, her voice was low, insistent, and saturated with venom. “You think yourself so high and mighty. You’re not, even though you’ve got that there-and-gone marriage giving you all of this so-called freedom. Just because you made it down the aisle with yours and I never did with mine doesn’t mean a thing. You cling to the old rules of society and pretend to be a modern businesswoman, but the truth is, you can’t have both.”

“Why ever not?” Mary asked, releasing Edith’s arm. She felt a cold smile rise. It was the selfsame smile she had always used as a shield, but there didn’t seem to be much stopping it. “I seem to have done well for myself so far.”

Edith made a disgusted noise at her that would have had their governess tutting at the both of them. But before she could reply, she gave a startled look over Mary’s shoulder. “Cousin Matthew!” she said, and Mary had to fight every instinct not to whirl on the spot, as it would hardly be considered ladylike. “How long have you been here?”

Now Mary did turn, and there was Matthew, standing at the mouth of the hallway with a folio in his hands. He looked completely flustered. “Forgive me,” she said, even as her heart pounded at the mere sight of him. “We were caught up. I hope you don’t think us rude.”

Matthew shook his head, giving them both the wide-eyed look of an animal caught in sudden torchlight. “Not at all,” he said, seeming to recover his equilibrium. “I’m the one that should apologize, I think. To answer your question, Cousin Edith, I haven’t been here more than a second, I promise.”

Was he lying? Mary wondered; he wouldn’t meet her eye, but that might have been mortification at getting caught. It worried her more than she had figured possible that he might have heard her barb about suitable men. Shame flooded through her at the thought, which startled her. Only Simon regularly managed to shame her about the times she hadn’t quelled her sharp tongue. But Matthew, like Tidwell, was educated and middle-class…

“Mr. Stirling sent a note around that you would be touring the factory today, so I thought I might pop in.” Matthew still looked wildly uncomfortable. “I mostly wanted to see if you required anything.”

“Nothing at all,” Mary said, and her voice sounded too bright, even to her own ears. “My sister was just expressing her concerns over my business practices. You know how it is.”

Matthew looked from sister to sister. “Quite,” he said.

“We really do need to be getting back before Mr. Stirling and Mr. Tidwell wonder if we’ve got lost. Are you coming with us, Cousin Matthew?” Edith asked, smoothing over the tension as only Lady Cora’s daughter might.

He glanced swiftly, uncertainly, at Mary, but gave Edith a nod. “Of course.”

“Mary, we should invite Cousin Matthew over for tea,” Edith said as they began to walk back to the meeting. “And your mother, too. How is Cousin Isobel?”

Matthew likely didn’t hear the venom in her sister’s voice, but Mary did. It made her frown as she followed them into the meeting.

* * *

Matthew’s thoughts were still heavy as he left the factory. Somehow, the invitation to come for tea had changed to full-out meal with his mother for the next evening, provided that Isobel didn’t have any dinners at the hospital planned. That had been Edith’s maneuvering, which surprised him, though maybe it shouldn’t have. The last invitation to dine with Mary, after all, had come from Simon. It had struck Matthew during his visit at Downton Abbey that the Crawleys were an interfering lot, always poking at each other, especially the sisters. That hadn’t changed in the intervening months, apparently.

_An educated man not of our class. Edith, have you gone mad? You have no business casting doe eyes at him._

Even half an hour later, the words stung. Mary had been right—she was hardly ever wrong, even when she was wrong, Matthew had discovered—and he was foolish for being hurt, he knew. Lady Mary and Lady Edith came from the aristocracy, and there were rules and invisible fences in place, and it wasn’t like he had a chance to start off with, not when he was merely the lawyer and Lady Mary the client.

Those invisible fences didn’t stop him from thinking about her far more than he should. Whenever he felt idle, his thoughts had a habit of wandering to her, wondering what she was doing or what she might think of something that happened to him or to the world. At first, he had blamed the letters.

The letters between them had slowly become more personal, certainly. He asked after her family. She included some scathing observation about life, either at the Abbey or in London, that had started as footnotes and now opened her letters, so that he more often than not read them in the comfort of his home rather than his office. They’d even begun to exchange opinions on literature and philosophy. He’d been surprised to find out that she knew Greek on their first meeting, but now he took it for granted, as she regularly offered opinions on one translation above another, often arguing with him.

And now he was reminded, quite forcefully, that he had been foolishly tilting at windmills. What had he been hoping for? Friendship? One simply wasn’t friends with a woman like Lady Mary Cavendish, no matter how well-read and witty she might be. Thinking beyond friendship was completely out of the question. Right now she was a woman in mourning, but with her fortune and appearance, she would be the toast of the town the moment she cast off the black. In addition, as Mary had demonstrated perfectly clearly in an argument he shouldn’t have heard, she not only acknowledged those invisible fences, she respected them.

Truth be told, he’d never pictured settling with somebody like Mary. That was probably because, he admitted ruefully, that he had never thought anybody like Mary could exist: somebody so strong and bold and impossibly bright, it almost hurt to look at her. But if pressed, he always imagined he’d choose somebody quiet and demure for a wife, somebody that would host important dinner parties with ease and a sense of quiet competence, should he decide to try his hand at a politicking career or trying to rise in the ranks at his firm. They’d have pleasant conversation—she had to be well-read, at least—but he always figured he’d fix upon somebody proper, and that would be that.

“What’s got you in such a mood, Crawley?” Mr. Haims asked as Matthew let himself into the law offices and put up his hat and jacket, though the weather definitely didn’t call for them. But paying a call upon the Lady Mary, factory or no, required proper dress. “Somebody run over your cat?”

“No, sir,” Matthew said, working up a smile for his boss. “I was merely thinking.”

“No use for thought on a day like today.” Haims glanced out the window, where the sun shone weakly through the glass. “When you’ve a moment, pop by my office? We need to talk about the Colby case.”

“Certainly, sir.” Matthew mustered up a polite smile, excused himself, and headed straight to his office, pausing by Kipling’s desk to see if he had any messages. He didn’t, so he slipped behind his desk and resolutely forced his thoughts toward reviewing the Colby files, as Haims was a strict taskmaster. 

It didn’t do a thing. He still thought about Mary, and how much her words—whether she’d known he was there or not—had hurt.

* * *

“Mrs. Crawley and Mr. Crawley, my lady,” Hatch, the solemn-faced butler—a miniature, slimmer version of Charles Carson if Matthew ever saw one—said just before Isobel and Matthew were shown into the drawing room. Mary had sent the car for them, a luxury that had made Isobel raise her eyebrows and remark that that was very kind. She made an offhand statement that she doubted Mary and Edith would extend such courtesy to her alone, but Matthew had chosen to ignore that, and the knowing look that followed. Ever since Isobel had caught him reading a letter from Mary and smiling, that look had made its way into quite a few conversations, far too often for Matthew’s comfort.

They were there in the drawing room, Mary and Edith both. Cheeks were bussed, greetings exchanged, and Matthew found himself sitting on a divan next to Edith while they caught up. Since he knew his mother was watching him particularly, he made sure not to stare at Mary too much, though she looked stunning. She’d done something different with her hair, and the black flattered her. Some women might have looked sallow, but it suited Mary. 

Edith, her year of mourning Patrick Crawley now clearly over, wore a blue gown that somehow paled next to Mary. She was as lovely as her sister, Matthew supposed, but he simply wasn’t drawn to her the same way. It appeared that Edith had enjoyed the tour of the factory far more than Mary had, for she gushed to Isobel about some of the new inventions Mary’s money had brought into the workplace, and how helpful Mr. Tidwell had been. Since that same Mr. Tidwell had been a point of contention between the sisters, Matthew did his best to look polite and studiously avoided Mary’s gaze.

Mary, likewise, did not look at Matthew. There were enough stories and small talk to keep the four of them occupied until it was time to go into dinner.

“I feel rather bad for my cook,” Mary confessed over dinner. “I’m not in Manchester very often, but she’s an artist. Given her temperament, though, I’m not sure how well she would stand up to Mrs. Patmore back at the Abbey.”

“They’d either get along famously,” Edith said, “or they’d be at each other’s throats within a quarter hour.”

“Unfortunately, I think you’re right about the latter.”

“Do you intend to stay on at the Abbey?” Isobel asked Mary as she dished salmon onto her plate from the serving tray held out to her. “Once the next year has passed, I mean?”

Mary frowned, thoughtfully. “I suppose I’ll settle in London, when I’m not in Manchester.”

“No small town life for you?” Matthew asked.

“When I’m at Downton, I miss the city, and when I’m in the city, I miss Downton, though I suspect I miss Downton more than I do the city. Simon’s the one that was born and bred to have his roots at Downton.”

“It’s true. He won’t leave unless pressed to by Papa. When we’re in London, he complains dreadfully about the smells so much that Mama threatens to send him home,” Edith said.

Mary picked up her sister’s narrative easily. “Which is of course what he wanted the whole time,” she said. “He’ll be up here tomorrow, actually, so I suspect he may pay a call upon the both of you soon.”

“He will?” Edith looked surprised.

“I got the telegram right before dinner. He said something about preventing homicide.” Mary took a delicate bite of salmon. “Honestly, I’ve no idea why.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what he could mean,” Matthew said before he could stop himself, and received narrow-eyed looks from both sisters.

He was grateful for the warning, as it turned out, as he looked up from a series of papers he was reviewing from the Colby files two days later to find Simon Crawley being led into his office by Kipling. Lord Downton looked exactly as he had the last time Matthew had seen him: eager, open, grinning. “Matthew!” he said, his voice booming. “Sorry for the lack of formality, old boy. I’ve never really cared for it.”

“Good to see you, too,” Matthew said, laughing. The young lord looked far too tanned for an aristocrat, which told Matthew he’d been sneaking in more outdoor time in London than was considered proper. It fit, however. He was grinning as he shook his distant cousin’s hand like they were old mates from university. “Lady Mary mentioned you were coming to Manchester. Do you have a legal issue that needs my assistance?”

“Papa sends all of my legal scrapes to Murray,” Simon said, and Matthew wasn’t sure if he was jesting or not. “Ghastly man. I was in the area, thought I’d pop in. Do they keep you shackled to that desk?”

“We’re given a crust of bread at lunch and fifteen minutes in the sunlight each week,” Matthew said. “But I suppose I can get away for a bit now, if nobody’s looking.” His eyes had begun to cross, anyway. A break and a chance to catch up with Simon might help with that. Though he’d been at the firm long enough to gain some credibility, he still kept a wary eye and hustled Simon out of the law office a little faster than necessary. 

By mutual and silent agreement, they headed in the direction of Johnson Street. Matthew made it a point to walk by at least once a week, though he wasn’t sure what good that actually did. It reassured him that the factory wasn’t on fire, he supposed. He knew he was going above and beyond what some might consider the call of duty for a client, but he liked to think he had had a hand in the evolution of the factories. He felt a distinct sense of pride in that fact.

“So how’s London been?” Matthew asked.

“Boring, as ever. Hot. Close.” Simon tugged restlessly at his cap. “Granny and Mama are conspiring against me, to the surprise of absolutely no one, I am sure. They keep throwing one eligible miss at me after the next.”

“And you keep dodging, I imagine.”

“Swiftly and with much agility!” Simon laughed. “Very pretty girls, though. There’s simply not an original thought between all of them. I’d be bored inside of a week.”

“So you chose to hide out in Manchester?”

“Hide out? I am offended. I came here to ensure that my sisters have something other than each other to which they can direct their anger. It’s a noble calling.”

Matthew, remembering the argument he’d accidentally overheard a few days before, couldn’t help but agree. “And if you happen to hide out while doing so?”

“Can’t help coincidences now, can I?”

“I see.”

“Speaking of my sisters, I must thank you.” They turned onto Johnson Street.

“Whatever for?”

“I don’t know what you said to Mary, but whatever it was, it must have worked.”

Matthew, still not sure what Simon could possibly be talking about, gave the other man a puzzled look.

“She’s going to invite Papa out to come see the factories. He’s been wanting to, of course, but he hasn’t wanted to step on her toes.” 

“I assure you, if somebody said something, it wasn’t me.”

“Really?” Simon frowned, clearly puzzled. “That’s odd.”

“Why is that odd?”

“Mary’s very stubborn. She doesn’t listen to many people, but she listens to you. I would have thought that you had said something.”

“No, nothing. Perhaps she came up with the idea herself.”

“Perhaps. I will say, it’s boring in London without her. The only reason I got through the first few seasons was because she was there. Her rather biting brand of wit kept me from climbing the walls out of boredom.”

“I’m sure that would cause quite the stir,” Matthew said.

“Have you ever been to a coming out ball?” Simon gave him a scandalized look. “They don’t even have the common decency to serve good food. It’s dry and tasteless, and one is forced to simper at people that you really should avoid at all costs. Never mind making ‘polite’ conversation. Mary and I used to see who could collect the most erroneous facts during our conversations.”

“What would you win?”

“I never knew. Mary always won. Men liked to boast to her, once they figured out she’s smart, and some of the things…I’m glad Edmund came along when he did. He saved Mary from embarrassing herself by stabbing a serving fork into some unfortunate soul’s hand or something equally scandalous.”

“She never talks about him,” Matthew said before he could quite stop himself.

Simon raised his eyebrows. “Well, it’s private, isn’t it?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders up to his ears. “Did you get a chance to meet him? He was a client of yours, wasn’t he, since you’re representing Mary now?”

“Not officially, at first. He worked with Babbett. I wasn’t even supposed to be as involved as I am, but with my background and the fact that I’m somewhat…” Matthew cast about for a word that wouldn’t insult Josiah Babbett, as he was still employed by the man, no matter how little he agreed with the other man’s politics. “More progressive, it makes sense for me to assist. It’s been a relatively painless process. Mr. Cavendish was so respected that nobody dared challenge his ideas for the factories after his death.”

“Oh, come now, be honest with me. They did protest, but Mary raised that eyebrow of hers and they fell to her feet, shivering in fear.”

Matthew laughed. “It wasn’t _quite_ like that.”

“Sure it wasn’t.” Simon began to whistle, cheerfully, and the subject was dropped in favor of events happening in the papers, and whether or not trouble was brewing in Europe. 

The family went away a week later, back to the crush of London and the Season, leaving Matthew adrift without Simon unexpectedly dropping by and Mary’s short notes about things she remembered that he needed to handle while she was in town. Even bereft as he was, though, he paused when the first letter arrived from her, bearing news of the family mixed with the business of the day. He remembered her words to her sister, and the idea that she could be nothing to him, not while the great gulf of class and nobility existed between them, and even knowing that, he wrote back in kind.


	6. In Which There Is Secret Dancing

_June 1914  
London_

Mary smiled at the Duke of Crowborough and made her excuse, slipping from the conversation as she had been trained to do since almost before she could walk. Cora had instilled all of her daughters with the social graces, no matter how often Mary wished she hadn’t, and that she could just be rude and blame it on ignorance. But she was a lady first and foremost and that meant she couldn’t throw her drink in the face of a gentleman, no matter how tempted she was or how much history existed. It had taken a marriage, a mourning period, and the subsequent rush of potential suitors now that she was, well, rich, to show Mary the true natures of half of the suitors that had turned her down on her first go-round. The duke was just the latest in a long train of gold-digging gentry.

She’d rather be independent for the rest of her life than to simply hand them her money, Mary thought, as much as the thought depressed her. She hadn’t even reached her twenty-fifth birthday and was already contemplating a life alone.

She was careful not to let any of her thoughts show on her face as she hunted up Simon, which had been her excuse to leave the Duke of Crowborough behind. Cora had gone all out on Sybil’s debutante ball, festooning the house in cheerful colors, hiring an orchestra, inviting every eligible bachelor and lady in London, it felt like. After all, she now had four children to on the marriage mart. Simon, of course, was doing his best to avoid the grasping hands of the desperate mamas, and so Mary found him by the punch bowl.

“It gets worse every year,” her brother murmured as he handed her a cup of punch. “Next year, they might actually bring a scale and weigh me on the spot.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I? I notice you got away from your conversation with Crowborough rather quickly.”

“I had other matters to oversee.”

“Or you were tired of him eying you like a prime cut of beef.”

“Simon!” Mary protested, though she was laughing.

“You can’t deny that you are quite the commodity this Season,” Simon said. “Already married, but young, and you come with so much money that you might as well cart it around in your luggage like a pirate with gold doubloons.”

“How frightfully pedestrian.”

“It’s a pedestrian world, sister mine. We just live in it.” 

Mary, about to reply, was interrupted by their mother, who slipped by beside them at the punch bowl. Though she was smiling, both siblings could clearly read the threat in Lady Cora’s eyes. “Simon! Mary! Why are you here in the corner, conspiring? Did you not see that the Baron of Sutcliffe’s just arrived? Mary, you should go greet him, you two got along famously during your first season.”

“Him, yes,” Simon said under his breath. “The hoyden he calls his wife? There, I wouldn’t agree.”

Mary muffled her instinctive laugh in the back of her glove, as her mother would only tut at her. “I’ll go over and speak to them right now.” At least Baron Sutcliffe, being already taken, wouldn’t fawn over her fortune.

“Excellent. Simon, have you met Lady Marston’s niece? She’s just returned from a trip to Scotland—I want you to meet her.”

“Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant,” Simon whispered to Mary as they parted ways.

Mary skirted around the dance floor, where she could see Sybil with the latest of a long line of beaux. Edith had goaded Evelyn Napier into a dance, which surprised Mary though she elected not to give it much thought. Since Edith had come with her to Manchester, their relationship had altered. It had started slowly: Edith had, after extensive reading, had recommended that Mary look into a new type of manufacturing. Edith and Tidwell had argued for the inclusion of these new machines, and they had certainly paid for themselves within six months. It seemed now that Edith was in Manchester almost as often as Mary, to the point where she was almost as involved in the business as Mary was. 

Mary sensed that Edith felt as unsettled by these changes as she did. Certainly, they argued, but their arguments were no longer pettish, nor did Edith seem interested in Tidwell for anything other than his mind. A discussion a few nights before at dinner between them had caused Sybil to put down her knife and fork and declare that the world might be changing, but not as fast as the occurrences happening in the dining room at Grantham House.

Cora hadn’t looked overly pleased at that. Mary imagined that her mother would rather daughters be wives than industrial mavens.

She slipped through the crowd now, giving a company smile to a few associates. Before she could reach Baron Sutcliffe, though, something across the room caught her eye. She turned, puzzled, as Matthew, who’d obviously just arrived, did the same. Even across the room, their eyes met.

It was such a simple, normal thing, but it nearly made her take a step back. After her initial reaction to seeing him—when her husband hadn’t even been cold in the ground—she had expected that the power would fade over time. But it had only seemed to grow, to the point where she actually looked forward to coming to Manchester, which was patently absurd. Matthew’s face cleared immediately, a smile overtaking his features. His eyes seemed impossibly warm and just as brilliantly blue as they had been the day he had walked into Edmund’s office with her lawyer. He turned to say something to Isobel, who’d evidently arrived at the ball as late as he had, and murmured something before he headed across the room to Mary.

She forgot all about Baron Sutcliffe’s odious wife and met him halfway.

“I had rather hoped to slip in unnoticed,” he said, looking chastised. “But you seem to have caught me.”

“You’ve only now just arrived?” Mary asked, pretending as though she hadn’t kept an eye out during the first hour of the ball. “Was something amiss?”

“The train was late arriving from Manchester. Mother nearly scolded the conductor—I suspect she doesn’t want to give Lady Grantham anything to lord over her.”

As one, Matthew and Mary looked toward where Violet Crawley held her court with the other dowagers and chaperons. Mary felt a giggle build up, and hid it behind her gloved hand as Isobel marched determinedly over.

“That will certainly end well,” Matthew said, and this time Mary couldn’t hide her giggle. “Care to lay a wager?”

“As much as I respect your mother, I know all of Granny’s tricks, and I assure you, she’s a vicious competitor. Just ask old Molesley. He regularly has the best blooms and yet he has yet to best Granny in the flower show.”

“Best not tell my mother that. The sense of justice runs strong through that side of my family.” Matthew glanced down at her dress, and Mary nearly felt a flush rise. After a year and a half of full mourning and six months of half-mourning, the bright red gown felt almost scandalous. When Matthew looked back at her, though, his eyes were smiling in that way they had, making the dress completely worth it. “You look well.”

“Thank you. It feels wonderful to be free of that dreadful black.” Mary glanced about and noted the number of people who looked very quickly away. “And I must say, you clean up very nicely, too. You also have quite a few people that are now very curious about who you might be.”

“Which will scandalize them more?” Matthew asked. “That I am your lawyer, or that I am the poor relation? How should I be introduced, do you think?”

“Cousin Matthew!” Simon appeared, apparently having freed himself from Lady Marston’s niece in record time.

Matthew’s eyes laughed once more. “I suppose that answers that,” he said in an aside to Mary. He turned to Simon with a smile. “We were just debating how to introduce me around, but you’ve solved that dilemma.”

Simon’s eyes, likewise, sparkled with fun, as they always did. “We could go around calling ourselves ‘the heir’ and ‘the spare.’ It might inspire Mama to come down with a case of the vapors, but I guarantee it will raise your importance in the eyes of this lot.”

“I’m not entirely sure I would consider that a good thing.”

“Nonsense. Come, I’ll take you to see the woman of the hour. She’s already tasked me with making sure you ask her to dance, and Papa will want to talk to you. Mary’s always flitting in and out of Manchester, so you see her enough.” Simon smirked at his sister as he hauled Matthew away, leaving Mary shaking her head at them. She turned away to find a new conversation, but found Matthew at her elbow once more, having shaken off Simon’s grip.

“Before I go,” he said, “I was wondering if I might have the honor of a dance? Later? After Cousin Simon has tired of the scandal of introducing me to perfect strangers?”

“He’s tireless, just to warn you. But I may have a dance to spare,” Mary said, but she felt giddy as she gave him a slow nod. This time, a real smile bloomed on Matthew’s face, and Simon chose that moment to pull him away.

* * * 

He’d known that he would be completely out of his element at Sybil’s ball—as he had always felt on his visits to Downton Abbey—but Matthew hadn’t expected to feel it quite this strongly. It sat between his shoulder blades, pressing steadily downward until he felt himself shrinking by centimeters. With every polite introduction (and there were quite a few of those, Cora was really going out of her way to introduce him around to a number of people he would have never met otherwise), he felt the unasked questions of the other parties add to the weight already pushing him down.

He didn’t belong in this ballroom. He was a solicitor, for the love of all things good and holy, not some dandy that belonged in ballrooms. It was exactly like being back at Oxford and some of the society dinners he had been forced to endure. The thought crossed his mind more than a few times that he felt a bit like a pony put on show, which was Simon’s famous claim for time spent during the Season. Navigating the ballroom, Matthew could certainly see that now. It made him wonder how the Crawleys could survive in this world, as it felt a bit to him like he might begin to drown if he weren’t careful.

Of course, whenever that thought came on too strong, he glanced across the ballroom and caught Mary’s eye. She raised an eyebrow at him before turning back to appear politely interested in somebody three times her age that was no doubt blustering about.

Humor, Matthew reminded himself. He needed a great deal more of it than he had.

He spent a great deal of time on the dance floor. Cora had filled the guest list to capacity and though he might be the poor relation, he never lacked for partners. As to why that was, it was no mystery: Simon had lived up to his promise and had indeed gone about boasting that Matthew was the spare. When Simon would tire of that, Matthew had no idea, but it made him more than a little uncomfortable. He’d earned everything in his life. Waiting for somebody to die to gain more seemed more than a little uncharitable. How the Crawleys must look at him, knowing that, he couldn’t begin to fathom. But when he danced with Sybil and Edith, and both seemed to think it completely natural that he should be there. With Edith, there were now mutual acquaintances in Manchester to discuss, and Sybil wanted his opinions on the things she had been reading in the papers, as “Simon and Papa won’t ever talk about it with me, and Mary’s so busy with her factories these days.”

She proved far more well-read about all of the subjects than Matthew had expected, but he found later he wasn’t surprised in the least.

Once he’d finished his dance with Sybil, he had attempted to hunt up Mary to claim her hand for the promised dance, but Robert had waylaid him by wanting to introduce him around as well. By the time he’d talked politics until he felt his tongue might fall out, Cora had him once more in her sights, and he was encouraged to dance with the daughter of a baronet. Simon, across the dance floor, made such a ghoulish face at him that Matthew had to cover a laugh with a cough. His next dance partner, who had no title but an apparently sizable dowry, was surprisingly engaging. She had an uncle that was a solicitor in Shropshire and some knowledge of the law itself, and was witty besides, so Matthew actually felt a pang when the dance ended and she moved on to her next partner. As he moved to do the same, he noticed that Mary had slipped from the room.

She hadn’t returned two dances later, when he successfully evaded Cora by retreating to the punchbowl with Edith.

“Are you using me as a shield against Mama?” Edith asked as he handed her a cup of lemonade.

“Is it that obvious?”

“Yes, and I’m afraid it won’t work.”

“I gave it my best shot,” Matthew said with a rueful smile. As he looked around once more for Mary, he noticed that Sybil was surrounded by a flock of young men. “Is it like that all the time?”

“Mm, yes. She’s likely bored of them all,” Edith said. She took a long sip. “I’m surprised Mary isn’t here letting her own gaggle of admirers play the bumbling fool for her.” 

“Yes,” Matthew said, since he wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.

Simon hurried up. “Edith, you have to rescue me. Please. You’ve promised the next dance to me, you have.”

“I’ve done no such thing.”

“My sweet, sweet angel of a sister, please show mercy and spare me from dancing with Miss Jones.”

“I will do nothing of the sort. You left a frog in my bed!”

“When you were six,” Simon said, looking pained. 

“It was last week, Simon.”

“And I swear never to do so again, provided you spare me the agony of having my feet trod to pancakes by Miss Jones.”

“Oh, very well.” 

“My angel,” Simon said, giving Edith such an adoring look that she laughed and shook her head at him.

“Cousin Matthew,” she said, “I’m very sorry to leave you at the mercy of our mama.”

“I shall fend for myself very well. Go, save your brother.”

Simon mouthed ‘you’re welcome’ over his shoulder as he led Edith to the dance floor, making Matthew laugh and shake his head. After checking to make sure that both the Lord and Lady Grantham were currently occupied in things far more fascinating than him, Matthew gave the ballroom another cursory look and slipped out. Mary had been gone far too long.

* * *

Mary told herself that she wasn’t hiding. Even she was having a hard time believing that lie, but it hardly seemed to matter. Once more, she defied her mother’s etiquette lessons by slouching, leaning one shoulder back against the cool wall on the second floor. If she moved forward and peered over the railing, she would see Sybil’s ball in full swing. Should anybody choose to look up, they would spot her easily. Even though nobody looked up, except to admire the chandelier, Mary hung back in the shadows and listened to the orchestra play.

In a way, this ball was a revitalization of the Crawley family. The youngest daughter was now out, able to pin her hair up, and the eldest daughter, no longer a Crawley officially but one in spirit, had left mourning behind, marking her as available. Four Crawleys, all of them ready to be plucked up. A Crawley for every one of your needs, Mary thought. Cora had even invited Matthew along to really spice up the selection and add some middle-class flavor, as if Mary’s factories weren’t doing that already. 

In fact, Cora seemed to regard Matthew as a second son to be married off as quickly as possible, like Simon, which puzzled Mary. Cora had played matchmaker for her children since they were in their cradles, Mary knew, but for her to take an interest in Matthew as well seemed odd. But, nevertheless, there she was, moving him smoothly about and introducing him to one eligible lady after the next, so that he was never in want of a dance partner.

While Mary had been dodging yet another man reaching for her fortune—how utterly banal—Matthew had danced, and charmed, and flirted. He’d let out a genuine laugh at Miss King, who was so _obvious_ and petite that it set Mary’s teeth on edge. She’d retreated upstairs, where she definitely was not hiding, right after that. It wasn’t much quieter, as all of the noise of the ball drifted up, but at least she wouldn’t have to keep the polite smile on. Her respite was almost at an end, though, and Cora would have plenty to say about it later on, for all Mary was a widow and not a debutante anymore. A servant would be sent to find her before long.

The creak of the top step made her straighten; apparently her respite was shorter than she thought. Who had her mother sent this time? One of the servants, most likely, as the Countess of Grantham wouldn’t be able to tear herself away to give Mary a lecture.

Matthew rounded the top of the stairs, looking the other way. When he swung about to face her, he drew short in surprise.

“Oh,” he said.

“You’ve found me once more,” Mary said. “You seem to be making a habit of this.”

“Not intentionally, I—” Matthew broke off in surprise when she tugged on his sleeve, pulling him away from the railing. “I assure you. Are you hiding, Lady Mary?”

“Yes, and if you tell Mama, I will tell Babbling that you think his new hat makes his head look overlarge.”

Matthew began to laugh, and it sounded far more genuine than the time Miss King had made him laugh, making a warm pride flood through Mary. “Babbling?”

Mary rolled her eyes. “Simon’s name for him.”

“Ah,” Matthew said. “Can I make a confession?”

“Am I your confessor?” The idea held some intrigue. They already exchanged letters far too often for lawyer and client, and the topics roamed over everything, giving Mary quite an interesting look into the mind of Matthew Crawley.

“Only if you wish to be.”

“Very well, lay your sins at my feet,” Mary said, faking a solemn look. She managed to hold it for a full second before her lips twitched as the giggles threatened.

Matthew’s lips twitched in response, but he managed to keep his face somewhat composed as he said, “I confess, I may be the one trying to hide. You caught _me_.”

“Why?” Mary asked. “There are quite a few young, accomplished women for you to choose from here.” The words came out more bitter than she had intended.

“You mistake me. They are the ones from which I am hiding, you see.”

“Why is that?”

“Because they keep asking me to dance.”

“And what’s so terrible about that?”

“I don’t know how many dances are left, but I couldn’t bear to give up the dance you promised me by accident. So I chose to hide. I know it’s not very sporting of me.”

Though they were mostly in shadow, she could see his eyes clearly, and the warm, adoring look on his face. Mary felt nerves flutter and tickle her midsection, and wondered why she was suddenly so short of breath.

“No,” she said. “No, I agree, not sporting of you at all. Perhaps...” She felt an incredible feeling of boldness in that moment, as if she were untouchable, simply because of the way he was looking at her. “Perhaps you should claim that dance, and spare the hearts of your would-be admirers.”

“Perhaps.” Matthew held out a held, making a short bow. “May I have the honor?”

Doubt began to siphon off the feelings of empowerment. “What?” she asked before she could stop herself. “Here?”

“Where better?”

“The dance floor, of course.” But she found herself putting her hand in his, and stepping closer. They were the proper distance apart, of course, his hand in its correct place on her back, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder, but the fact that they were alone, that they could hear the conversation and the music but see nobody but each other added a sense of excitement to it that Mary could not deny. Her stomach was actively leaping by this point; there was a vein in Matthew’s throat that seemed to jump in time. It should have comforted her. Instead, it made the nerves worse.

Matthew set off in time to the music. The narrow hallway didn’t give them much room, but he seemed to improvise easily.

“You’re good at this,” Mary said.

“You sound surprised. I’m not sure if I should be insulted.”

“I’m not sure, either. Do you have much practice dancing in corridors?”

Matthew smiled, but didn’t reply, and for a moment, they were silent, letting the music guide their steps.

“This really is quite mad,” Mary felt the need to say.

“Mm.”

Since it was obvious that Matthew wasn’t going to continue to make small talk through the dance, Mary fell silent, too. It was obvious Matthew had had some dance training in his life, as he didn’t appear to be counting under his breath—as one of her partners had done, earlier that evening—nor did they brush into the wall or the railing. It led to much tighter dancing than one might have experienced in the middle of a ballroom, but she didn’t mind. She could feel the heat of his hand through her dress, and her hand fit so naturally into his.

It felt _right_.

It had never felt like that before. Even with Edmund, who had been a fairly decent dancer and an attentive husband, it hadn’t felt this natural, or this simply perfect. She had never felt as complete a sense of belonging as she did right now, dancing with Matthew Crawley, in the upstairs hallway in Crawley House.

Matthew stopped moving, and she blinked to discover they were down the hallway from where they had started, close to the door that led to the servant stairwell. Bewildered, Mary looked around, and down at their feet, as if they could tell her why they had ceased dancing.

“The song is over,” Matthew said, though he looked as bemused as she felt, and a touch out of breath besides. “Which means the dance must end.”

He released her, smiling a little self-consciously. Mary felt as though she’d walked into a fog as he turned to look over his shoulder and the railing at the ball below. “We should get back, no?” he asked, and offered her his arm.

She ignored the instinctive need to correct him that there was simply no way they could walk into the party arm and arm without tongues wagging all over London. Things would only get worse if word spread of their clandestine dance on the second floor. She ignored that, though, and the arm that Matthew offered to her. Instead, she reached past his arm, touching his face as she had longed to do all evening, and she kissed him.


	7. In Which There Is a Party

_August, 1914  
Downton Abbey_

Though the August day was sunny to the point of sultry, Mary couldn’t help but feel as though gloom had cast its pall over Cora’s garden party. No matter how much Robert had insisted they could cancel, that their neighbors would surely understand, Cora had been likewise adamant. She’d conceded only to the chair the servants had toted across the estate. The family, Simon and Sybil especially, had tried to hover about, but Cora had already made a point of shooing them away. Mary could see them across the party, Simon talking to Sir Anthony Strallan, Sybil conversing with Edith.

Upon noticing Mary’s scrutiny, Cora raised her eyebrows. Mary decided this was invitation enough and made her way over. Her father’s letter a few days before had struck hard: though she wasn’t sure how she had felt about having another sibling, especially one so much younger, the loss still hurt. It also hurt to think of what her mother might be feeling. After all, she’d mourned the fact that she hadn’t had children with Edmund before his death, and it could be nothing compared to Cora’s pain now.

“Aren’t you enjoying yourself?” Cora asked as Mary fixed a polite smile in place. “This is the first we’ve seen you in over a month. You’re always so busy.”

“I’m happy to be here, Mama. You know I love Downton,” Mary said. She nodded her thanks to the footman who brought over a chair so that she wouldn’t tower over her mother, and sank into said chair gratefully. Disturbing reports had begun to flow in through her men of business, requests from the government for increased production, notices that her products were the subject of negotiation by people whose names weren’t being revealed to her. As a result, they’d had to hire on another shift, though she didn’t much like the thought of it. The cost of providing better lighting for the workers had been exponential. Even though she’d given in to Sybil’s nattering and had hired on Gwen Dawson, and the ex-housemaid was spookily efficient, Mary still felt exhaustion form about her like a second skin.

She hadn’t seen Matthew in over a fortnight. They had been due to see an opera singer at the New Theatre with Isobel the night before, but a problem had arisen at the factory that needed Mary’s attention, meaning she had unfortunately had to cancel. Since her train had left early that morning, she hadn’t even had time to stop by his office and pay a call to apologize. She had arrived at Downton with Gwen, as her secretary had family in this part of the country, with only enough time to change for the garden party and greet some of her family. Half of her mind was still back in Manchester, even now.

“Things have just been happening, that’s all,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

Cora gave an absent gesture. “I am perfectly fine without every creature on this earth fawning over me,” she said. “I want to hear about these factories of yours.”

“Truly?” The rest of the family asked after developments and kept track of her progress, particularly her father, but Cora had always treated the factories rather like embarrassing pets that Mary insisted on keeping around.

“You have found something you love,” Cora said. “I think it is my duty as a mother to take an interest.”

She sounded offended, which made Mary smile. “Of course, Mama,” she said. “Things are going well. Not perfectly, mind you, but with all of the changes I’ve been tasked to make, expecting perfection was a foolish notion on my part.”

“And how is Gwen settling in?”

Mary glanced across the lawn, as though she expected Gwen—or Miss Dawson, as they called her in the office—to be there among the maids. “I know it’s bad form to steal servants,” she said, “but I won’t apologize. She’s been an absolute godsend, and something of a balm to my ego after I couldn’t convince Anna to take the post as my ladies’ maid.”

“I won’t thank you for even trying,” Cora said, chuckling. “That, my dear, is bad form. Mrs. Hughes claims that without Anna, Downton would fall to pieces.”

“I’m not sure Carson would agree.”

Cora shook her head, chuckling. “Have you been getting much rest, darling? I ask because you look so dreadfully tired. Is Manchester so noisy?”

“My home is perfectly quiet,” Mary said, laughing at the thought. Whenever she fell into her bed, she was usually asleep before her head truly hit the pillow. “It is just that there is so much to do and things are in such a flux. I should be grateful you bullied me into attending.”

“Yes. It is a nice day for a party.” Cora looked about. “Did you see? The Kettleworthys came, and they hardly ever show their face at these sorts of events.”

“I would consider that a success,” Mary said, though she hardly remembered the Kettleworthys at all.

“Sir Anthony has been by to see Edith quite a bit more lately, you know, whenever she’s not busy in that awful city of yours. They went driving the other day.”

“Edith and that fossil?” Mary asked, truly surprised.

Cora gave her daughter a look.

“What?” Mary asked. “You can’t deny that he is a good deal older than her!”

“We considered him a good match for you, once.”

Mary took a long drink of her champagne. “That would have been a disaster.”

“You found what you wanted, in the end,” Cora said with a small shrug of one shoulder.

And he promptly died, Mary thought. It couldn’t be denied that she had had strict standards, the same standards she had pompously announced to her family at sixteen. He must be rich, she had said, and powerful, and allow her to move quite easily in society. Her parents had indulged her at the time, and nobody had been more surprised than them or thrilled when Mr. Edmund Cavendish had taken an interest.

Now Mary herself was rich, and powerful, though she didn’t necessarily move easily through society. In fact, most of society found her bull-headed desire to keep her late husband’s factories running to be downright puzzling. She wasn’t ever cast out of drawing rooms because of it—money did provide a cushion, after all—but she knew quite a few that whispered behind their hands whenever they thought she couldn’t hear.

“I suppose I did,” she said.

“Speaking of which,” Cora said, and Mary regarded her mother, wondering what Cora might have to say about Edmund. But her mother only looked over and nodded, and following her gaze, Mary saw Matthew across the party, in conversation with Robert, looking well and whole in a linen suit.

Mary could hardly cover the jolt of surprise, or the intense spurt of happiness. She tried, but Cora just raised an eyebrow at her.

“How long have you known?” Mary asked.

“Longer than you, I suspect. I invited him, though I certainly wasn’t expecting him to show up last night out of the blue!”

Butterflies settled along the interior lining of Mary’s stomach. “And you approve?”

“I’m puzzled, but certainly. A middle class lawyer, Mary? He may be in line for the title, but…a lawyer? I truly don’t understand it.”

“Not just a lawyer,” Mary said, fighting the laughter bubbling up in her throat, “but a solicitor at that!”

Cora gave her daughter a scandalized look. “I suppose,” she said, “we could always pretend he is aiming for the position of Lord Chancellor.”

“I’ll let him know of his plans.”

“Is anything official?”

“No,” Mary said. Since that first kiss, hidden away on the second floor at Sybil’s coming out ball, there hadn’t been an offer of marriage. She was surprised by it, considering how traditional Matthew could be, but not particularly put out. She’d been married once. Getting married again in a hurry wasn’t on her list of interests. “Nothing official. We’ve barely had time to see each other, let alone to talk about what any of it could mean. Do any of the others know?”

“Oh, likely everybody,” Cora said. “Simon already seems to regard him as a brother.”

“Color me amazed,” Mary said dryly. Simon had, after all, taken to her first husband like a duck to water as well. 

“Do you love Matthew?” 

Mary looked at her mother in surprise. Cora had never asked her that about Edmund. “Yes,” she said, and the answer surprised her. “Yes, I think I might.” She was struck by the notion that she suddenly wanted to gush about how smart and kind Matthew could be, how he was far too kind for the likes of her, who had resented rather than mourned her first husband. All of that smacked of being too much like an Austen heroine for her tastes, though, so she left it at that.

“Then I’m happy for you.” Cora reached out and squeezed her hand. “Even if he is a lawyer.”

“My last husband was a factory-owner,” Mary felt the need to point out.

Cora toasted her with the water glass. “I confess, I did hope to throw somebody across his path at Sybil’s ball, and perhaps prevent this.”

Annoyance rose so quickly that it took everything Mary had not to show her active dislike at such an idea. She was reminded of her reaction to Miss King, over whom she still held a grudge, making Matthew laugh.

“But I can see there’s no point in fighting it. Just…do me a favor, though, Mary dear. Break it to your grandmother gently.”

“I will do my best,” Mary said.

They looked up to see that Matthew had come into the tent, holding champagne flutes. One of them, he offered to the Lady Grantham. “I’ve been tasked by your husband to deliver this to you. Please don’t harm the messenger.”

“Nonsense,” Cora said, accepting the glass with a nod of gratitude. “Mary was just telling me she’d had no idea you were invited.”

“Being secretive?” Mary asked, raising her eyebrow at Matthew. He looked well, she thought, in his suit and hat for the party, and much more comfortable than he had seemed the night of Sybil’s ball.

“Mostly by accident, I’m afraid. I hope it’s a good surprise, at least.”

“Mary, have you shown Matthew the grounds?”

Mary looked at her mother as though Cora had gone mad. Matthew had visited Downton several times. If Mary hadn’t given him extensive tours of the estate, Simon would surely have filled in that position right away. She caught the twinkle in Cora’s eye, and realized that her mother was once again playing matchmaker. This time, she found, she didn’t mind.

“Never in the summer,” Matthew said. “Perhaps you might show me around?”

“Certainly.” They bid their farewells at Cora and headed off together, Mary twining her arm through Matthew’s. “You really could have mentioned that you were coming to this party! I’ve been sitting here regretting that I had to cancel on you last night, and this entire time you’ve known you would see me today. It’s rather unfair.”

“I wanted to see the look on your face,” Matthew said, laughing. “You can’t fault me that.”

She had thought her reaction to Cora’s words had gone unobserved. Knowing that it hadn’t annoyed her. “Oh.”

“I am amazed your jaw did not swing in the wind. I almost checked to make sure I had not turned into an apparition. I haven’t, for the record.”

Mary looked down at her hand, which rested on his arm.

“Touché,” Matthew said, smiling at her. They turned a corner around a copse of trees, where they were no longer visible to the rest of the party, and Matthew immediately pulled her close. “It has been far too long. I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too, but—” She let him kiss her, and it took a long moment for her senses to return. “But not right here! Honestly. Any of the servants might see!”

“Downton is crawling with ears and eyes, it seems.” Matthew, grinning, grabbed her hand and tugged, so that she was forced to walk quickly to keep up.

“Where are we going?”

“Your mother said to show me the grounds. Let’s go see the grounds.”

“Oh, very well.” She gave a very false long-suffering sigh. “Let’s go this way, there won’t be anyone about.”

“Simon will be jealous he wasn’t able to escape,” Matthew said. “Last I saw him, he was forced into discussing the political climate in Serbia. He did not look pleased.” 

“No. I imagine he’s been glowering into the newspaper for weeks now. He and Papa don’t agree at all about what is truly going on.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think things are changing,” Mary said, and left it at that. She hadn’t ever paid attention to world politics before her time with the factories, and even now had to force herself to do so. Discussing it was even worse, as there was nothing she could do to change it, so why talk about it ad nauseam?

There were other things to discuss. He didn’t release her hand as they talked of the last two weeks, filling each other in on daily minutiae. One of the partners at Matthew’s firm was talking of retiring. The interviews for the new workers to staff the munitions factories were going reasonably well. Mr. Stirling’s wife had delivered a healthy baby, another boy, of course. That, Matthew had heard, as he’d sent over a toy for the newborn and a bottle of scotch for the parents, who already had three boys.

“I was a young boy once, after all,” he said, laughing. “I am sure my father turned to the drink a time or two.”

“Yes,” Mary said in a solemn voice. “Simon was always the most trying of all of us.”

“And the rest of you were of course perfectly behaved.”

“How dare you suggest otherwise,” Mary said, her voice dry. She rolled her eyes. “Our poor nanny. Between Simon’s penchant for finding every four-legged creature on the estate and my temper, it’s a wonder we didn’t go through many more than we did.”

“And how many was that?”

“Oh, two or three until Miss Johnson. She grew up on a farm, you see, so Simon thoughtfully giving her a grass snake didn’t bother her in the slightest. Edith, of course, shrieked. She’s afraid of snakes to this day.”

“And you?”

“Who do you think found the snake?” They were walking toward the temple, Mary realized, which had a marvelous vantage point from which to admire the Abbey. She’d spent hours there as a child, mostly trailing after Simon as he tried out his various adventures. Though she had claimed time and again that a lady didn’t have adventures, Simon had cajoled until she’d gone on his deep sea fishing expeditions, or played cowboys in the middle west, or searched for gold within the shores of Africa.

“I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like to grow up here,” Matthew said, perhaps reading her thoughts. “My parents kept a very nice house, and I never wanted for a thing, but it still boggles my mind to think of calling such a large estate home.”

“It was just home,” Mary said. “Nannies and governesses, the servants, Mama, Papa, all of it. They were all part of it.”

“Ah, yes.” They reached the temple, and Matthew released her hand to wander about inside the Corinthian pillars. “Home, where you have a temple on the grounds.”

“Be careful. Your middle class is showing.”

Matthew smirked at her, though he quickly returned to craning his neck to get a better look. “Where does this come from?”

“Some ancestor or another,” Mary said. 

“I suppose I’ll have to ask somebody else if I want to know its history,” Matthew said.

Her father was the custodian of the family history; Mary passed their portraits in the hallways and more often than not did not pay attention. It was Simon’s duty to learn that sort of thing, as he was the heir, and he was the one that would carry on at Downton, no matter that Mary was the elder. There had been some jealousy about that in her youth before she’d truly understood the mantle that rested upon Simon’s shoulders. From then, she’d struck out to form her own destiny, by marrying somebody rich and powerful, and it had worked for a time. 

“I recommend Simon,” she said, “but only do so when you’re in the mood to be dragged back out here, and to all of the other buildings on the estate. He’s quite mad for architecture.” 

“Thank you for the warning.”

Mary turned to look out across the grounds at the Abbey, which gleamed in the sunlight. It was no longer truly her home, she knew, as her marriage had changed that, but it still felt like home nonetheless. She was always welcome, she knew, even if her visits had been shorter and less frequent of late, with most of her time spent in Manchester, physically and mentally as of late, though she had no idea why. It seemed like a different world, Downton did, from the constant meetings and ledgers and the dirt and sweat of her business. 

Some days she wondered why she didn’t simply give it up and return to a life at Downton permanently. She dealt with so many skeptical men, men that believed no woman belonged in the boardroom, and it made her only more determined to make her way. That meant sacrifices, she’d discovered, as she’d had to give up a lot of the lifestyle she’d grown up with—fewer days making calls and visiting with acquaintances, to be certain, among other things. Was it worth it, to have an occupation? She liked to think that it was, even though her life and the world seemed to be in a constant state of change.

“Ahem,” Matthew said.

Mary looked over, her eyebrows immediately lowering as she tried to figure out what he could possibly be up to, kneeling on the ground like that. “What are you…”

It hit her all at once why Matthew might be kneeling.

“Oh,” she said.

He laughed a little, but she could hear the nerves in his voice and in the way he looked down briefly. When he looked up, she was absolutely riveted by his eyes, by the intense expression on his face, so much that she was frozen on the spot. He reached out and grasped her hands, and even though she was vaguely aware that he was doing so, she felt entirely suspended from herself, as though this were happening to somebody else.

“This seems a bit presumptuous,” Matthew said, and paused to lick his lips, his nerves even more evident now. He began again. “This seems a bit presumptuous to ask, given that on the surface, I’m nothing but your lawyer—”

“You’re more than that,” Mary said.

Matthew smiled at her, though trepidation now lined the muscles of his face with tension. “Thank you for that,” he said, laughing a little. “Truly. I confess, it’s been more than that for me, too, for a long time, and these past months have told me that I don’t want to live without you. I know we’ve our differences and we come from different places, but it’s true. I want to spend my life with you. So, will you, Lady Mary Cavendish, do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

Mary went absolutely still. She’d known this was coming somehow, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she admitted as much to her mother? Even then, nothing could compare to this, to looking at the hope and fear so plainly written on Matthew’s face. There was a sense of humming power in the moment, as his face told her very clearly that with a single world, she could crush him. No, not power, she realized. It was just as terrifying for her as it would be for him. She’d lost a husband once, one who’d been young and fit, just like Matthew was now. And while she had grieved in her own way, she hadn’t mourned the loss of a soulmate. If she lost Matthew, the same wouldn’t be true. 

They had, she discovered, the power to destroy each other. Nobody else would ever make her heart beat faster just with a small smile, or would ever make her laugh quite as much or—

“Yes,” she said, quite before she knew what she was saying. “Yes, of course.” 

Matthew’s grip tightened painfully, almost like a spasm. “What?” he asked.

Despite herself, she gave him a look. “Did you not just hear me? I said—” She broke off, laughing, as Matthew climbed to his feet and crushed her in an embrace in one swift motion. He looked almost dazed, and she certainly understood the feeling. There was a piece of her that was still separate and watching the world through a foggy glass, until Matthew kissed her, and it became so real that her knees nearly buckled.

It had to be real, though, since she could feel him shaking just as badly as she was! She laughed as she drew back a little, not far, just enough to frame his face with her hands. “You are aware of what you’re getting into, correct?”

“Not at all.” His smile overwhelmed his face. He kissed her again. “And I haven’t got a single problem with that!”

Later, after she had admired the ring with its simple, elegant cut, it was agreed with much reluctance that they had been absent from the garden party for so long that even Cora’s American ideals of propriety were probably stretched beyond their limits. “How long have you been planning this?” Mary asked, turning back to look at the temple as they walked away. She remembered Matthew coming upon her there, quite unaware that she had been hiding at all, during his first visit at Downton.

Had all of this been planned? Had her mother been in on it? 

Mary suddenly realized why Matthew had come the night before and why it had been so urgent.

“Since Sybil’s coming out ball,” he said, looking almost shyly at her as she blinked away her discovery. “If you want a more accurate time, I would have to admit it was since you kissed me at Sybil’s coming out ball.”

“Was it?” Mary raised an eyebrow at him. “That must have been some kiss.”

“It changed my life.”

“Hold on: did I hear you aright? Did you really say presumptuous in your marriage proposal?”

“You could argue that the question is possibly the most presumptuous question a man could ever ask.”

“You could. But it’s still an odd word choice. Did you think I would turn you down?”

Matthew glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “I wondered,” he said.

“Why? Because I’ve been so busy lately?”

“Not at all. Out of everybody, I understand best why you’re busy.” Matthew’s lips quirked up in a small smile. He let go of her hand. “It’s…”

“Well?”

“I…overheard something. A while back. A long time ago, actually.” Matthew shoved his hands into his pockets and they walked along, picking their way carefully as the path wasn’t smooth in this part of the estate. “You were talking to Edith about something. The both of you sounded cross.”

“That could be every other conversation we have, Matthew,” Mary said, laughing.

“Yes, true. The two of you do enjoy crossing swords, don’t you?”

“I’d say she enjoys it more than I do.” Mary thought back, wondering what she had quarreled with Edith about lately. They had settled down, hadn’t they, once Edith had taken an active involvement in her factories? What on earth could they have been fighting about that would put him off proposing?

“It was about Edith and Tidwell. You discouraged Edith from flirting with him because he was middle class.”

When had she done that? Edith and Tidwell regularly put their heads together; for whatever reason, her head engineer liked input from her sister and Mary wasn’t going to stand in the way of whatever helped out her business. With a striking clarity, though, she recalled the precise argument Matthew must be referencing. A flood of shame followed by a quick spurt of indignation followed that. “Oh, yes,” she said, her brows knitting together while she tried to figure out why it could possibly matter to Matthew. 

She’d taken exception to Edith’s attention for Tidwell because he was middle class. Matthew, too, was middle class—upper middle class, to be sure, but that didn’t change things for him.

Mary bit her lip. “Oh,” she said. “You were interested even then?”

“We had sent all of those letters, you see. I thought they had to mean something.”

“And you came upon me scolding my sister for dallying with a middle class man. I can see how that might be puzzling. Though, honestly, if I’m to have standards, I don’t see why they can’t be double ones.”

Matthew smiled, but his uneasy glance at the Abbey, still visible in the distance, made Mary reconsider her flippant remark. She was still walking on clouds from the sheer euphoria—Matthew had asked her to marry him, today of all days, and he was here at the garden party with her and it had been ages since she had seen him—but it wouldn’t do to start an argument first thing after their engagement, no matter how perfectly them it would be.

“The truth is,” she said, and paused to lick her lips, which was most decidedly more like him than her, “I don’t think of you. I never have.”

“What way?”

“Middle class. Upper middle class, whatever you are. You’ve always been just Matthew to me, even when it wasn’t proper to think of you that way.”

Matthew stopped walking and slowly withdrew his hands from his pockets, turning to look at her. “So you’d have me either way?”

“I already said yes,” Mary said. “I have many faults, but I could never be accused of not knowing my own mind. Though, granted, if anybody asks, you’re to claim I have no faults at all.”

“I am, am I?” Matthew laughed and stepped closer to her, putting his hands on her waist—they were still not in view of the party, so Mary let him. She liked these moments that allowed them to be improper. They sent her heart racing and allowed her to be closer to Matthew, to really get a close-up look at the way his eyes shifted between varying, brilliant shades of blue. “Very well, should anybody ask, you’re flawless.”

“Thank you,” Mary said, and let him kiss her.

She drew back, startled, when she heard their names being shouted. Thankfully, it was only Simon and not one of the servants; he crested the nearby hill and hurried toward them, looking panicked. If he noticed the fact that Mary and Matthew were standing conspicuously apart with identical innocent looks on their faces, he made no comment. 

Instead, Mary looked at his face and felt dread, of all things, begin to gnaw at her spine as he approached. “Simon, what is it?” she asked. “Is it Mama? Did she collapse?”

“No, no, nothing like that, she’s fine.” Simon looked between Mary and Matthew. “You’ve missed it—Papa’s had a telegram. There’s a war.”

“What are you talking about?” Matthew asked.

Simon looked deathly solemn. “We’re at war,” he said. “With Germany.”


	8. In Which There Is a War

_February, 1915_  
 _Paris_

Matthew looked down at the slip of paper—hastily written by a clerk that had no doubt had to go on to write fifty or sixty such missives in just as much of a hurry after Matthew had left—and up to the sign over the hotel door. “You’re positive that the directions were supposed to lead us here?”

“Yessir,” Corporal Barney Lynch said, and nipped the paper out of Matthew’s hand. “Says Le Maréchal right here, it does.” He jerked his head up at the sign, knocking his hat askew.

Matthew squinted at the paper. “You can _read_ that?”

“Yessir.”

“Oh.” With a shrug, Matthew pocketed the slip and pushed through the hotel’s front door. Most crowded in the lobby were fellow soldiers. Some were likely headed to the front, others away from it, and Matthew couldn’t discern who was whom, mostly because Paris did not seem like a city at war, and that threw a fog over everything associated with it, even temporarily. He signed in for the room with minimal, garbled French and let out a weary prayer of relief that this had not been a disaster. After the main office had misplaced his orders, leaving him stranded and waiting in one line after the next, the morning had stretched into an eternity, and he wanted nothing more than to kick off his boots and spend at least ten hours horizontal on a real, proper mattress, French or not.

“Will you be needin’ me tonight, sir?”

“No, I think not. Take the evening, Lynch, but be mindful: we’ve an early train.”

Once Lynch had scampered off, no doubt to find the rest of the soldiers on their temporary furloughs—Lynch and his ear for gossip were dead useful, and most of that came from a love of being around other, garrulous soldiers like himself—Matthew turned to head up the stairs to his room. The receptionist’s voice stopped him.

“Excusez moi, Lieutenant Crawley vous dites? Du courrier est arrivé pour vous aujourd’hui.”

It took a second for the words to filter through Matthew’s tired brain, and even longer for him to realize that the receptionist was holding a couple of envelopes out to him. He took them, and saw that though they were addressed to a Lt. Crawley, it wasn’t Lt. M. Crawley. “Non,” he said, “je ne suis pas ce—” 

The letters came from Yorkshire, he realized belatedly, and they were addressed to a Lt. S. Crawley. Matthew blinked. “Pardon,” he said in English. “But is—est-ce que, ah, Simon Crawley séjourne ici?”

“Oui,” the woman said, and before Matthew could murder the French language any more badly, the front door of the hotel opened, spilling another group of British soldiers inside. At their forefront was none other than Simon Crawley, Lord Downton himself.

Simon’s face lit up immediately, with genuine pleasure and relief. “Matthew!” he said, crossing the room in three strides and pumping Matthew’s hand. “Talk about a sight for sore eyes! What brings you to Paris?”

Matthew laughed and returned his cousin’s embrace. “What else? Orders. I’d no idea you were posted here.”

“Just temporary, I’m afraid. They’re sending us back to the suicide ditch soon enough.” Simon gave a surprisingly charming smile for such a macabre statement before he turned to the receptionist and rattled off very quick French. By the time Matthew had translated even half of it, Simon was tucking the letters into his breast pocket and the receptionist was headed back to her desk with a wary eye at the soldiers in the corner. “How long are you in town?”

“Just the night. I’m on the early train to my next post.”

“No time to waste, then! Let’s stow your things, go paint the town red. C’mon.”

A few minutes later, having washed in a hurry, Matthew found himself being propelled out of the doors of Le Maréchal and onto the streets of Paris. This time there was no cheerful chatter of Cpl Lynch to accompany him; instead, Simon filled that void. They hadn’t seen each other since September, when they had both bought into the army as officers, Simon from York, Matthew from Manchester. Matthew got most of his news of Simon from Mary’s letters, which came with as much regularity as could be expected from the British army, and now Simon was all too happy to fill in the blanks. They compared training experiences—“Frightful bore, that.”—and their first posts—“Boring and frightful.”—and Matthew made Simon nearly stumble into a passerby out of laughter by recounting exactly what sort of clerical nightmare it had taken to get him a hotel room in Paris after the Army had shipped him all over France.

“Well, if nothing else, you must be hungry,” Simon said, wiping away the tears of laughter.

“For real food? Yes.” Matthew nearly closed his eyes with bliss at the thought. “You have no idea what I’d give for the full English.”

“’Fraid it’s a bit late for that. Found a marvelous little café the other day, though, you’ll like it. Proper food, for all that it’s not English, but you’re in Paris, man! Live a little.”

Foreign or not, the food in France beat the tar out of rations. Matthew was so hungry that it took everything he had to remember his manners as they ate at Simon’s “marvelous little café,” which was of course packed to the gills with other soldiers. Simon, who had already eaten, tried and failed to smoke a cigarette.

“Why bother?” Matthew asked when Simon burst into another round of coughing.

“Need to fit in.” Simon tapped ashes from the end of his cigarette. “Don’t know why. Don’t even like cigars, let alone these nasty little things. Papa claims I’m a disgrace.”

“And you thought cigarettes would work out better?”

“I will succeed at this.” Simon took a drag and coughed again. “Eventually. Eventually, I will succeed at this.”

“I wish you luck with that,” Matthew said, and tucked into the rest of his meal. The food was helping shake some of the cobwebs from his brain.

With a sigh of disgust, Simon put the cigarette in the ashtray and reached into his pocket, pulling out the letters from home. “There’s one from Mary,” he said, waving it at Matthew. “Want it?”

“It’s addressed to you.”

“You’re the one engaged to her.”

“It’s addressed to you,” Matthew repeated, laughing. “You’ll know she’ll be very put out with you if you don’t write her back, or if she finds out you’re giving your mail away.”

“Too right.” Simon sighed and opened the letter. “‘Dear Simon, you can have no idea how relieved I truly am to find out that you have not wound up in the Army’s version of prison’…well, how do you like that?”

“What did you do?” Matthew asked.

“It was all in good fun, no one was hurt.” Simon’s voice was absent as he scanned the rest of the letter. He burst out laughing.

“What is it?”

“Another story about Edith driving her mad, naturally. How they are getting on together in Manchester without Sybil to distract them, I can’t possibly fathom.”

“Did she perhaps give you an update on Ralston?” 

“Ralston?” Simon asked, brow furrowing. “What’s that?”

“Not a what, a who. Chap at the War Office,” Matthew said, and filled Simon in on as much of the situation as he knew. It had been strange to think about Manchester while in training and at his various posts, when his mind should have been occupied by war matters, but Matthew’s thoughts were constantly back with Mary, who he knew was struggling to maintain control of her factories from Mr. Ralston. Josiah Babbett, of all people, was proving a valuable ally to Mary, but no matter how pleasant her letters seemed, Matthew reckoned she had to be quite vexed. She’d already sacked one of her managers for feeding inside information to the War Office.

By the time he’d finished explaining now, Simon was outright scowling. “I’ll have to write to Papa,” he said. “Get him to put some pressure on the War Office.”

“She won’t thank you for it.”

“That’s too bad. She’s a Crawley. We look after our own.”

“Not officially a Crawley again yet, unfortunately,” Matthew said, and sighed. They’d agreed to put off the wedding until Matthew returned from the war, as there had been promises that he would be home by Christmas. Christmas was two months past, and there was no end in sight. 

Simon snorted. “Cavendish, Crawley, what’s it matter? Is this Ralston as bad as you say, truly?”

“I don’t know. He’s likely worse. You know how Mary is.”

“She figures we have enough to worry about. And we do—like what we’re going to do tonight!” Simon tucked the letter away and smacked his palm on the table, making those at the table next to them jump and reach, no doubt, for guns. Simon laughed as they shot dark looks over at the Crawley men. “We’re in Paris, after all. We must do something.”

There was a heavy undercurrent to his words that made Matthew look over in alarm, but the subject was dropped in favor of wandering. Since Simon had been in Paris for four days, and once as a younger man, his directions were relied upon. They headed for the métro together.

“If it weren’t for the soldiers,” Matthew remarked, looking about, “I would think France wasn’t even at war.”

“Gets a bit different at night, but I see your point.” 

They disembarked at Anvers, where Simon failed at remembering that he was smoking and nearly burned his finger. “You really are remarkably terrible at that,” Matthew said, shaking his head as Simon tossed the butt away. “Are you sure you need that as a hobby?”

“I will preserve. For King and Country.”

“If you say so.”

Rue Chappe proved a beautiful walk, even with the tree limbs stripped bare by winter’s caprices. “Have to come back in the summer,” Simon said, looking up as they climbed one set of stairs after the next. “Paris really turns itself into a beauty in the summer. The Seine, it’s downright gorgeous.”

They waved off a couple of ladies of the night, no doubt attracted to the uniforms, and continued walking. “Where are on earth are you taking me?” Matthew asked, laughing as they encountered more stairs.

“Highest point in Paris, of course. Where else? Once you’ve seen the Sacré Cœur, you’ll weep with gratitude and offer to name your firstborn after me.”

“If you say so.”

“And of course La Place du Tertre! You haven’t lived until you’ve seen that, and they’ll be doing a mean business right about now, I think. We’d best hurry, though, as we haven’t much time.”

Matthew did not offer to name his firstborn after Simon when they reached the Sacré Cœur—“Good thing. What if it had been a girl?”—though he did admit that the sight of the Basilica, and the view, was well worth the number of stairs they had climbed. They found a spot to sit atop la Butte Montmartre, where Paris lay spread out below them like a gleaming jewel in the afternoon light. Matthew, tired despite himself, was glad for the respite.

After a minute, though, Simon snorted. “Home by Christmas,” he said, sounding bitter. “Bollocks. Absolute bollocks.”

Matthew shifted uncomfortably against the freezing stone. He’d come across this attitude time and again—morale was hard to maintain in the trenches, which were frozen, mired pits of miserable cold—but it made him uncomfortable. The number of idealists in the army dwindled as the body count rose, as the cold stretched out and the fighting raged on. It was one thing to believe the campaign posters that had popped up like daisies overnight, the ones that had inspired Matthew and Simon to enlist. It was something quite different, though, to face that reality when any second, a bullet might carry you to your maker. Matthew knew he had to believe in something, or he might go mad. He chose to put his faith that they really were making a difference, somewhat, but more, in his fellow soldier, in those slogging through the trenches with him. If he started to doubt, he mightn’t ever stop, and the war would only stretch on longer, with him so far away from everything he loved.

“Maybe by next Christmas,” he said.

Simon snorted his opinion of that. “It likely won’t matter.” The undercurrent was back, Matthew realized, the same one from the café. “And it doesn’t matter now. We should keep moving, I’m losing feeling in my legs from this cold!”

Though yet another change in the subject made him wary, Matthew didn’t protest. He did object, however, when Simon insisted that they pose for one of the street artists, and only acquiesced when Simon pointed out how much Mary would laugh at such a drawing. “I think he got my nose wrong,” Simon remarked as they strolled away, laughing at their poses—they’d attempted to look as serious as possible, which meant that Simon was smiling, and Matthew looked exasperated. “What do you think?”

“It’s a fair likeness.”

“Is my nose really that big? I’d no idea.”

As evening set in, they walked down the Boulevard de Clichy. The sight of a red windmill on the side of the street made Matthew blink, but Simon clapped him on the shoulder and laughed. “Perfect. It’s open tonight. I wasn’t certain.”

“What _is_ it?”

“What else? The Moulin Rouge.” Simon strolled off, hands in his pockets, and left Matthew to be exasperated once more as he hurried to catch up. They purchased some of the last tickets left, which meant they were at a table in the corner, but Simon didn’t appear to mind. He peered anxiously over the heads of the people in front of them, waiting for the show to start. “I kept meaning to come out and see a show here, you know. I wasn’t sure I’d make it.”

“Glad to help,” Matthew said dryly.

“You’ve never heard of it?” Simon turned his full attention back to Matthew. “They dance the can-can. It’s marvelous.”

“I look forward to it.” 

The show did prove interesting, and interestingly seedy in a way that reminded Matthew, of all things, of Manchester. The stage props and sets had faded from hundreds of shows under the stage lights; the dancers hadn’t fared much better. He wondered if the show were as raunchy and raucous when they weren’t entertaining a house-full of soldiers, most of whom still looked young enough to be in university. Judging by the looks some of the dancers were sending into the crowd, they didn’t see the age difference or simply chose not to acknowledge it. Matthew figured the Moulin Rouge probably didn’t view the can-can as its only source of income.

During the second act, with Simon futilely trying to smoke another cigarette, a corporal ran into the back of the theater, looking about hurriedly. Matthew recognized the look; he shot to his feet. “What is it?”

The corporal saluted. “Brawl outside, sir! It’s bad—”

Matthew and Simon needed no more encouragement. Simon tossed his cigarette away and they ran from the cabaret hall to find that the brawl had turned into a full-on melee out in front of the theater.

“Damn,” Simon breathed, looking around at the carnage. Tables from a nearby café were overturned—the origin of the fight, no doubt—and soldiers sported bloodied noses and torn uniforms alike half a block away from that. Matthew spotted the main two combatants, a sergeant and a corporal, in the center of the fight and winced. They each had at least three stone on him. “Which do you want?” he asked, nodding at the pair of them. “I can take the one on the left.”

“Shun!” Simon said, and those nearest Matthew and Simon nearly fell over themselves to jump to attention. It was almost like watching a ripple effect, spreading away from them: once one soldier realized the soldier next to him had sprung to attention, he followed suit, until it was only the two main combatants left. 

“That works, too,” Matthew said.

* * *

By the time they’d separated the sergeant and the corporal, a Captain Nedermeyer had been located in the audience and was fetched to contain the situation. Simon and Matthew were sent on various errands to fetch the police from both the French and British armies. His very rudimentary French gave Matthew a touch of trouble, which meant he was late in returning to the Moulin Rouge—and when he arrived he found, of all things, that the soldiers had all cleared out because the building was on fire. A large crowd had gathered in the street to watch the building consumed by flames.

“What is going on!” he asked of Simon, who was just as out of breath from his own errand.

“No bloody idea. It was like that when I got back.”

“Was anybody hurt? Is anybody inside?”

“No idea!” They battled their way through the crowd, where it looked like Nedermeyer was orchestrating the battle against the fire. They were dispatched to join the brigade carrying buckets of water as the air filled with smoke and shouts in English and French alone. It was a different type of battle than those Matthew had seen during the war, with an opponent infinitely more vicious. For every bucket of water tossed or pumped onto the fire, the blaze fought back twice as hard, until somebody was grabbing the back of Matthew’s uniform shirt, shouting that they needed to retreat, there was nothing to be done. Panting, reeking of smoke and soot, he stumbled back to the safety line.

Simon pulled off his hat and mopped at his brow. “What a beast,” he said, almost reverently. “Think they’ll save her?”

“A lost cause,” Matthew said, wheezing a little. The smoke had hurt his throat, but he cleared it anyway. “They’ll have to rebuild, if anything.”

“Pity. I hope no one was hurt.” Simon craned his neck to look about, but nobody around them knew any more than they did, unfortunately. “It’s late. We should get back to the hotel, or go get a drink or something.”

“Sounds good. I’m parched.” They broke off from the crowd, Matthew glancing back once at the flames that climbed into the night, destroying the windmill and no doubt the livelihood of all of the singers that danced within it. “What a strange, strange day.”

“What a strange life,” Simon said.

“Too right, by half.” Matthew shook his head and ash floated around him from the top of his hat. He removed it to brush it off, though he imagined he looked like quite a mess. “I used to be a lawyer, and now I am in Paris fighting fires.”

“I used to be a viscount. Damn good one, too. You’re a viscount, your father’s an earl, you do what you’re told. I did what I was told.”

Matthew could think of several times Mary had specifically cited where Simon had not done as he was told, but thought it was better not to bring those up at the moment. “And now you’re not a viscount?”

“No more than you’re a lawyer!”

“That’s fair,” Matthew said. They turned a corner and a dip in the street provided them an unexpected vista of Paris at night. Without needing to speak of it, they stopped to appreciate the view. “It never feels quite real.”

“Fighting fires in Paris?” Simon asked.

“Life.”

“No worries there,” Simon said. “I suspect it won’t be troubling us much longer.”

Aghast that such a morbid statement could be delivered in such a cheerful way, Matthew turned to stare at his cousin. 

Simon, however, didn’t seem to notice. “I just hope that when it happens,” he said, staring at the view below them with eyes that told Matthew he was seeing something far different, “it happens quickly.”

Matthew gazed at him, torn as to whether he was more perturbed by the fact that Simon had voiced that thought aloud or if it was that he’d heard his own private thoughts echoed from his cousin’s lips. The moment passed before he could remark on it, though. Simon’s eyes cleared of the heaviness, and he reached into his uniform shirt to pull out that blasted pack of cigarettes again, a small smile playing across his lips.

“But that’s a thought,” he said, “for another time. I say we find a watering hole that won’t mind the reek of smoke and drink to being alive.”

Matthew heard the unspoken “for now” in his cousin’s voice, but didn’t comment on that either as they walked on, seeking out a respectable-enough pub. Though he’d dreamed of nothing but a civilized mattress and eight hours of sleep undisturbed by shelling and shouting, Matthew found that he had not slept a wink when he and Barney Lynch boarded the train the next morning. Still a little drunk, Lieutenant Crawley turned in the train doorway to wave at his cousin.

Lieutenant Simon Crawley waved back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of June 2014, I have decided not to finish this story, for mental health and real life reasons. Please feel free to assume that Matthew happily survived the war, Simon's last action was indeed an honorable and noble one, and that Mr. Simon Crawley, born in August of 1919, happily ascended to take over as the Earl of Grantham in 1947. One of his favorite memories is, of course, visiting Paris with most of his extended family and standing in front of the Moulin Rouge when his papa realized who, exactly, burned it down that fateful night in 1915.
> 
> Lord Simon Crawley never did pick up the habit of smoking properly, after all.


End file.
